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HARVEST 


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HARVES1 



JOHN STRANGE WINTER 


Author of “Regimental Legends,” “Mignon,” “Cavalry Like,” Ei„. 

SI^Cl/VVYVOJVCj , Hr . S , \J. i 




NEW YORK 

FRANK F. LOVELL & COMPANY 

142 and 144 Worth Street 








Copyright, 1889, 


JOHN W. LOVELL. 

IT transfeA 

JUN 8 1901 



0 

«* *i 

t * 

i c i 



HARVEST. 

By JOHN STRANGE WINTER. 


“ Every man’s harvest hereafter shall be according to his seed- 
time here.”— Scupoli. 


CHAPTER I. 

RAv./dEij POWER. 

“ God does not demand impossibilities. Do what you can.” 

— St. Augustine. 

I N a large well-shaded room in an Indian bungalow 
a man lay sick unto death. He knew himself that 
he was dying, no one better, for he was an army 
surgeon and had seen many and many a poor fellow go 
out in just the way that he was going now, though, 
perhaps, he had seen none slip away quite so quickly ; 
in fact, he was just saying so. 

“ It’s no use fretting about it, my woman,” he was 
saying to the girl who sat beside the bed and held one 
feeble hand in her young and hopeful strong one, while 
she patiently tried to fan a breath of air to his wasted 
lips with a palm-leaf which she held in the other; 
“ I’ve got to the far end of my journey now.” 

“But, dear,” urged the girl, “I don’t really believe 
it’s as bad as you think. Dr. Dealy himself told me this 


12 


HARVEST. 


morning that if I conld only get a little strength and 
nourishment into you, we might get you up to the 
Hills, and likely enough you’d be as well as ever.” 

A smile flitted over the dying doctor’s face. 

“ Dealy said — oh, my dear, Dealy was always an 
ass — I never knew a bigger. He means kindly enough ; 
but all the same they are only false hopes that he is 
trying to buoy you up with, and nothing in this world 
ever came of false hopes — aye, or in the other, so far as 
I’ve ever heard, either.” 

“ But you’re better to-day, dear,” the girl persisted, 
anxiously. 

“ Better ! Am I ? I didn’t know ; and I fancy I 
ought to know— best, dear. Better ! No, no, little girl, 
I’m not only no better, I’m much ivorse ; and it’s better 
to face the fact bravely, and settle what to do, than to 
shirk the truth and leave everything unsaid that should 
be said.” 

It was a good deal for a man so ill as Dr. Power was 
to say at once, and he paused almost exhausted by the 
effort. His daughter did not break the silence, because 
at that moment she could not trust herself to speak. 

“ I wish I could have made a better provision for you, 
Rachel,” Dr. Power went on after a few minutes. 

“ Don’t think about that, dear,” cried the girl, 
quickly. “ I shall be all right ; don’t fear for me.” 

11 Hnt I do fear for you,” he answered. “ I know 
what the world is, and you don’t. Until now you have 
always been able to live in fair comfort. You have had 
your trip to the Hills, your Ayah — everything needful 
for your comfort. But when I’m gone I don’t know 
how it will be with you. I wish I’d been able to make 
a better provision for you. A better one,” he went on 


HARVEST. 


is 


bitterly. “ I might have left out that word, for IVe 
not been able to make a provision of any kind.” 

“ Don’t say that, dear Father,” Rachel cried, in 
distress. “ I am young and strong and sensible, and 
you have given me a good education, and ” 

“ I wish you had married Forder,” Dr. Power 
broke in. 

“ But I do not, I assure you. Colonel Forder is 
fifty and has four children, and he drinks, and his first 
wife died of a broken heart, they say. Oh, dear, darling 
father, don't wish that ! I shall get on all right ; and if 
my grandfather won’t help me there is always my art.” 

“ Oh ! your art — mere child’s play.” 

“ Not at all. Two years’ hard work in Rome is a 
better training than many a painter gets, I can 
tell you.” 

“ And what can you know about it — you who have 
never even been home ?” ' 

“But I met a great many painLrs from home at 
Rome, and they told me almost thing. I know 
just what to do if General Vandeleuj wont own me.” 

“ But you’ll go to him, Rachel ? Promise me, my 
dear, that you’ll go to him as soon as you can possibly 
get to him. Promise me that you’ll let nothing tempt 
you from that course.” 

“ I will go straight to him, I promise you,” said 
Rachel, steadily. “ Nothing shall tempt me from 
keeping that promise — nothing.” 

Dr. Power drew a long breath of relief. “ I am sure 
it is the wisest thing to do, Rachel. After all, he is your 
mother’s father, and though he disowned her he knew 
that I was there to take care of her. I think he will 
feel differently towards you, because you have nobody 


14 


haevest. 


to stand by yon — nobody — nobody at all. And, after 
all, you’re his own grandchild, Rachel — his only 
child’s only child — and he knows that you have nobody 
— nobody in all the world.” 

“Iam sure he will be very kind and nice to me, dear 
Rather,” answered Rachel, though her heart sank dole- 
fully at the prospect of going all by herself to face the 
offended grandfather, who had been held up as an object 
of dread and terror to her ever since she could remember 
anything. “ But, dear, should you not rest a little ? 
You have talked so much, and it is wasting your 
strength, and taking away your only chance.” 

“ Oh ! I shall get rest enough by-and-bye,” he 
replied, in a tone which brought the scalding tears 
gushing to the girl’s tired eyes. “ Still, I’ll be quiet 
for half an hour or so. I suppose Dealy will be coming 
in again to look wise over me.” 

His opinion of his j unior had never been a great one, 
and now that he had come to be in the depths of 
extreme illness, the poor opinion had deepened into 
something very like contempt. All the same, he was 
weary and exhausted, and he closed his eyes and 
dropped off to sleep in less time than it, takes me to 
write these lines. For a few minutes his daughter sat 
quietly waving the palm leaf to and fro, and then, 
seeing that he was really sleeping, she rose and went 
out in search of the native servant whose special office 
that was. 

It was then after five o’clock of the afternoon — the 
worst heat of the day was over, and Rachel, who had 
been up nearly all the night and was very tired, went 
out into the well-shaded veranda and told the servant 
whom she found there to bring her a cup of tea. Then, 


HARVEST. 


15 


with a long sigh she sank into a chair, and in two 
minutes was fast asleep. 

How long she slept she never knew ; but it was fast 
growing dark when Dr. Dealy came out on to the 
veranda and gently touched her hand. “ Miss Power/’ 
he said, softly. 

Rachel awoke with a start, pnd, seeing the doctor 
bending over her, sprang up. “ What is it ?” she cried. 
“ Is he worse ?” 

“My dear girl,” said the other, “ I am afraid ” 

“ Is he dead ?” she gasped. 

“ No, not dead ; but in his sleep he has slipped into 
unconsciousness, and — it is kindest to tell you the 
truth, my dear — I am afraid he will never know you or 
recognise you again. I fear he is sinking fast.” 

Rachel turned swiftly away as if to re-enter the 
house, but the doctor caught her by the gown. 

u Stay, Miss Power. I see there is tea put ready foT 
you, but you have had none. You had better have 
something to eat and drink before you go into your 
father’s room.” 

She stopped short. “Yes; if they will make me 
some fresh tea I will come out at once,” she said ; “that is 
cold, and will do me no good ;” and then she passed on 
into the house, leaving him alone. 

“ Ah! poor girl; it’s a sad blow for her,” he muttered. 
“ I wonder — Hi ! Ramsee, get some fresh tea for the 
Mem-Sahib, will you? “Yes” — as the native dis- 
appeared — “ it must be an awful blow for her. I wonder 
if there’s any money — if she is provided for ? I wonder 
if she’d have me if I asked her? Ry Jove! she never 
gave me a word or look of encouragement, but I’ve a 
good mind to try my luck — by Jove I have!*' 


16 


HARVEST. 


While he was thus speculating about her, Rachel 
Power was standing beside her father’s bed. She saw 
that it was but too true, and that he was unmistakably 
sinking fast. Quite motionless she stood at the foot of 
the bed watching the dear face over which the shadows 
of death were quickly creeping ; and presently, when 
they came to tell her that the refreshment which Dr. 
Dealy had ordered for her was ready, she crept softly 
out and, after eating and drinking, crept as softly in 
again and took up her position once more without 
saying a single word. 

So through the hours which followed she sat waiting 
for the end — a tall slim tired figure, with loosely-clasped 
slender hands and sweet soft eyes darkened with the 
shadow of sorrow. 

It was not for long. Darker and darker fell the 
shadows over the face of the dying man, and more 
feeble and irregular grew his laboured breath ; then, just 
as the tattoo rang out in the square of the barracks hard 
by, there was a sigh and a silence, and the lamp of Dr. 
Power’s life had suddenly gone out. 



CHAPTER II. 


U WHAT MORE COULD I SAY?* 


•Compel men to feel you are in earnest.” — 

Robertson. 

“Prescribe to yourself an ideal, and then act up to it. 1 *— — 

Epictetus. 

is the custom in the shining East to put the dead 



JL away out of sight as quickly as possible, and accord- 
ingly all that was left of Dr. Power was carried with all 
the pomp and ceremony of a military funeral to the 
little graveyard of Jeypore, and there left in the undis- 
turbed and tranquil quiet which we shall all know one 
day — or stay, we may not know it, though certain it is 
that we shall all have it. 

It was an imposing sight, for the dead man had been 
unusually popular at Jeypore, and every European in 
the station had come to pay to his worn-out body the 
last honours and the respect which they had felt for him 
in life. 

Of course, the whole of the troops quartered in the 
command were present, and in the midst of the pro- 
cession came the gun-carriage with its sad burden 
covered by a pall borne by officers of Dr. Power’s own 
rank, and bearing his sword and helmet and the medals 
which he had won in old Criihean days and in more 


B 


18 


HARVEST. 


recent Afghan campaigns. Behind was led the dead 
man’s charger, decked in funeral trappings of black and 
white, with boots reversed in the stirrups in token that 
he would never ride him again. And then there came 
the one mourner, Rachel Power, accompanied by several 
sympathetic ladies of the garrison and followed by a 
long string of officers of all ranks. So they passed down 
the road to the little graveyard (but a stone’s throw 
from the Powers’ bungalow) to the slow and solemn 
strains of the “ Dead March,” and presently the air was 
rent by the three volleys which told that all was over, 
except the last gay jingling air to which the troops 
would march back to barracks. 

For Rachel there was nothing more to do now, only 
to take a last long look into the flower-decked grave 
which held her nearest and dearest upon earth, then to 
walk sadly back to the empty home which would be 
home to her but for a short time now. 

She spoke not a word as she went; and at the door 
of the house one after another of the ladies who had 
returned with her bade her a quiet farewell and left 
her — all but one, who followed her within and put her 
arm kindly about her. 

“ My dear,” she said, “ the others have gone away at 
once because we all felt that you would be best left quietly 
alone just now. But you cannot stop here ; come home 
with me and I promise you you shall be undisturbed as 
long as you like.” 

“ Dear Mrs. Leroy,” cried Rachel, gratefully, “ you 
are all so good to me — too good. But I want to stop 
here as long as I may. I have been very happy here” — 
looking with sad tearless eyes round the pretty drawing- 
room — “ and I may not .have a home of my own for a 


HARVEST. 


19 


long time. I know how kind and good you are, and I 
thank you as my poor darling would thank you if he 
knew — but I want to stop here alone.” 

“ My dear girl, you cannot sleep here alone,” returned 
the older woman, decidedly, “ it is utterly out of the 
question and impossible.” 

“ Oh ! please — please — ” 

“ My dear ; I would suggest nothing to trouble you,” 
Mrs. Leroy said, kindly ; u but remember you are 
alone now, and, as I say, you cann 3t sleep in this house 
by yourself or with only native servants. But if you 
would rather stop, come in to us in the evening after 
dinner, and you can be here during the day as much as 
you choose.” 

Eventually, this was what Rachel consented to do, 
and Mrs. Leroy went away to her own house, leaving 
her alone. Poor child, it was not for long that this 
arrangement lasted ; for in the land of the pagoda-tree 
the homes are easily put together and as easily broken 
up, the affairs of those who die in harness are set in order 
so quickly that to our slower minds there seems some- 
thing of indecency in such haste. So with the affairs of 
Dr. Power — almost before Rachel realized that he had 
been taken away, she was compelled to leave the roof 
under which she had been so happy, for ever, and seek 
the friendly shelter of Mrs. Leroy’s house. 

She did not, however, go there, except to sleep, until 
the day immediately before the sale of her father’s 
belongings, and Mrs. Leroy met her with an apology on 
her lips. 

“ My dear Rachel, T hope you won’t be very angry 
with me, but I have asked Dr. Dealy to dinner to- 


20 


HARVEST. 


“Oh! no, Mrs. Leroy, why should I be angry?” 
Rachel answered. “ I shall have to get used to seeing 
people you know. Why, in another fortnight I shall 
be on board the P. and 0. steamer, and there will be no 
chance of shutting myself up then.” 

“ No, that is true. Well, dear, I am glad you don’t 
mind. Dealy is a nice fellow, and was devoted to your 
poor father, and I think your father had a very high 
opinion of him.” 

The first smile that had been seen on Rachel Power’s 
face flitted across her lips then, for she remembered but 
too well the way in which her dear lost one had last 
spoken of Dr. Dealy — “Dealy said — oh ! my dear, Dealy 
was always an ass — I never knew a bigger.” 

However, she said nothing to her hostess, only 
repeated her assurance that she should be very glad to 
meet Dr. Dealy at dinner. And in due time Dr. Dealy 
came — a long, lankey, kindly man; not very wise, per- 
haps, but undoubtedly overflowiug with all manner of 
goodness. And yet, oh ! how the sight of him brought 
all the first pains of her new grief back to the girl’s 
heart — he might be, nay, she knew that he was, all that 
was good and kind, but he was such a contrast to her 
handsome genial father, with his great broad shoulders 
and his great rich voice and the great heart which 
knew just what to say and what to leave unsaid — the 
father who had been everybody’s friend and nobody’s 
enemy, not even his own. 

Until dinner was over Rachel had no suspicion that 
Dr. Dealy was anything but an ordinary guest — or, I 
should say, that there had been any special purpose in 
his coming. Yet cleverly enough, soon after she and 
Rachel left the table and went into the drawing-room, 


HARVEST. 


21 


Mrs. Leroy managed to efface herself, making some 
trivial pretence for her absence, so careless and so trivial 
as to arouse no suspicion in Rachel’s mind that there was 
a special meaning in it. 

Nor even when Dr. Dealy came in from the dining- 
room alone did she at all guess what was coming, 
although, if she had once looked at his anxious face 
with a less preoccupied mind than hers was at that 
moment, she could scarcely have failed to be 
enlightened. 

“You are all alone,” he remarked, not because he 
wanted to remind her of the fact, but only because he 
was unusually nervous and could not think of anything 
else to say. 

Rachel looked up from her work — for she was an 
industrious creature, who found it impossible to sit with 
her hands idly before her, and, when there was neither 
enough light nor a proper opportunity for following the 
art which was the passion of her life, she had generally 
some elaborate piece of embroidery on hand, and only 
the previous evening she had started to work a beautiful 
tablecloth which would last until the journey home 
would be at an end. 

“Yes,” she answered, “Mrs. Leroy has gone away for 
a minute, but she won’t be long. You must try and 
put up with me till she comes back ; but ” — with a sad 
little sigh — “ I am afraid I shall prove a very dull 
person to talk to, though I used to be entertaining 
enough.” 

Her words gave the doctor the chance he was 
anxiously awaiting. “ Miss Power,” he began, eagerly 
yet very humbly, “ I know I’m a poor devil — at least, 
that is, I’m not worthy of you in any way ; but — but 


22 


HARVEST. 


I’ve loved you for a long time, and if you would only 
trike me, I’d give all the rest of my life to make you a 
good husband. It shouldn’t be my fault if you weren’t 
the happiest woman in India. Miss Power — Rachel — 
say that you will ? ” 

He had come so near to her in his anxiety and eager- 
ness that he was almost kneeling before her; and 
Rachel, with something almost like a cry of horror, 
recoiled from him. 

“ Get up, Dr. Dealy,” she exclaimed. “ I beg — I 
implore you to get up — I insist upon it. I — I — cannot 
listen to this. Please don’t say another word — not 
another word.” 

Her tone and gestures were so urgent that he 
obeyed, but he pushed a chair close to her and tried to 
take her hand. “ Rachel,” he said, humbly, “ you are 
not going to refuse me ? ” 

“ But indeed I am,” she cried. “ How could you 
think of suggesting such a thing ? I, in trouble and 
my dear one but just taken from me. I think it is 
most inconsiderate and unkind of you. You might 
have known — you ought to have known that I should 
be sure to say no.” 

There were tears in her eyes, and tears in her voice 
too, and her pretty white hands were trembling 
violently. Dr. Dealy, however, blundered on, if the 
truth be told, plunging deeper and deeper into the 
mire of her displeasure and distress at each step he 
took. 

“ I always meant to ask you,” he urged, miserably, 
“ only I never had quite courage enough to risk your 
friendship. And it is only because your poor father is 
gone, and you are left alone and unprotected, that I 


HARVEST. 


23 


dared suggest it, I did not mean to be inconsiderate 
and unkind, Rachel, I’m sure you know that as well 
as I do; but there’s nothing on earth that I wouldn’t do 
for you if I could, and — and I thought, being left alone, 
it would be better to speak out to-nigtt, and then if 
you wanted anything buying at the sale to-morrow, for 
our house, why, I could buy it, and you wouldn't be 
disappointed and be sorry you hadn’t been able to tell 
me about it in time.” 

At this point Rachel Power burst out crying for the 
first time since her father’s death ; but for all that she 
was not deprived of the power of speech ; on the 
contrary, indeed, the outburst seemed to have loosened 
her frozen tongue. 

“ How dare you mention to-morrow ? ” she broke out, 
dashing her tears away with her hand and flashing an 
indignant glance at him. “ Our house ! how dare you 
talk about our house when you know I never gave you 
a word of encouragement in my life — how dare you ? 
No, I shall not be disappointed, and you know perfectly 
well that I wouldn’t marry a prince or promise to, 
which is the same thing, within a week of my darling’s 
death — if you don’t know it you ought to.” 

“ But Rachel, dear,” he urged 

“ Don't call me 1 Rachel ’ or £ dear,* ” she cried, 
passionately. “ I am not ‘ Rachel ’ to you, or 1 dear * 
either. And don’t presume to say again that I am 
alone and unprotected — I am neither. I am going 
home to my own relatives as quickly as I can get my 
things together.” 

“ Your relatives ! ” Dr. Dealy exclaimed in such 
genuine and blank amazement that Rachel’s anger was 
aroused again. “Why,” he said, simply, “I didn’t 


24 


HARVEST. 


know that yon had any relatives. I’ve heard your father 
say so dozens of times.” 

This was the last straw to the already much-tried 
burden of Rachel Power’s patience. She rose from her 
chair and gathered her table-cloth into a bundle under 
her arm, then she drew herself to her full height and 
fixed him with blazing eyes. 

“ You are mistaken, sir,” she said, with dignity. 
“My father certainly never told you that I had no 
relations ; he could not, for it would not have been 
true, and my father never spoke other than the truth. 
When I leave Jeypore I am going straight home to my 
mother’s father, General Vandeleur.” And before her 
astonished hearer could recover himself, she had swept 
out of the room, and he was left alone. 

In two minutes Mrs. Leroy, with many a warning 
rustle and cough, entered by the door opposite to that 
by which Rachel had taken her departure. 

“Well?” she asked, eagerly. “Is it all right ?** 

“All right, Mrs. Leroy — No, it is all wrong,” he 
answered, ruefully. 

“ What! did she say no ? ” the lady cried in astonish- 
ment. 

In the midst of his dismay the Doctor could not help 
laughing. “Yes, that she did ; and, by Jove, she slated 
me soundly for daring to suggest such a thing. It’s 
all up, Mrs. Leroy; I never had a chance from the 
beginning. I shall never marry now.” 

“ Slated you ? ” cried Mrs. Leroy. 

“ Yes. I always thought — until now — that however 
much a lady disliked a man who asked her to marry 
him, that she at least looked upon the offer as a compli- 
ment ; Miss Power doesn’t even do that.” 


HARVEST. 


25 


“Oh! she did not mean it,” cried the older lady, 
soothingly. “ She is unnerved and unhinged by all 
this terrible business — small wonder too, poor girl ; 
I know I feel utterly upset myself. But you must wait 
a few days, and try her again ; if a woman is worth 
asking once, you know, she is worth asking twice.” 

“ That is so ; but I shall never ask Miss Power 
again, Mrs. Leroy,” returned the Doctor, shaking his 
head. 

“ Why not ? Look at me — I refused my husband no 
less than six times; ^nd took him to get rid of him at 
last.” 

“ Thank you ; I’d rather not be taken just to be got 
rid of,” said the Doctor, promptly. 

Mrs. Leroy laughed. “ Oh ! that is sheer nonsense, I 
assure you ; ask the Major, and see if he is not the 
happiest man in Jeypore.” 

“ Perhaps so ; but — well — no thank you.” 

Mrs. Leroy remained silent for a moment, thinking 
deeply. 

“ See here,” she said, “ I don’t want Rachel to go 
back to England to relations she has never seen, who 
may make her anything but welcome, when by acting 
sensibly and reasonably she might be settled here in just 
as good a position as she has had all her life. And, 
what is more, I don’t mean to let her do it, if I can 
prevent her being so foolish.” 

“ But what can you do ? ” 

“Talk to her. I can talk to her reasonably and 
calmly. You probably — for men are such blunderers — 
started the idea on her too suddenly, and frightened 
her to death, besides making her realise her loss more 
than she has ever done before.” 


26 


3ARVEST. 


“ Well, I'm afraid I did,” lie admitted. 

u I feel sure of it — you know when the whole main- 
spring of a womans life is suddenly wrenched away 
from her she has to get used to the idea of replacing 
it. I am sure it would have been better to have waited 
till the very last, till she began to feel the pain of 
leaving all her friends and might have caught at any 
chance of remaining.” 

“ But I don’t want to be caught at like that ; I want 
to be married for myself,” he exclaimed. 

Mrs. Leroy looked at him curiously, as she might 
have looked at some strange kind of spider or cater- 
pillar. She had never realized before that Dr. Dealy 
had no conception of his own lankiness and the comical 
ugliness of his face. “ Bless the man,” she said to 
herself, “ doesn’t he know what a ridiculous creature he 
is ? How odd it is that he is so particular about being 
married for himself while a handsome fellow like my 
Major was only too thankful to be married to be got rid 
of. Oh, dear, dear ! what a funny world it is.” 

Thus her thoughts ran ; but, like a polite and sensible 
woman of the world, her spoken words conveyed a very 
different meaning. 

u Yes, yes,” she said, a little impatiently, u of course 
I quite understand all that — but my dear Dr. Dealy, 
you must make some little allowance for the state of 
the lady s mind and not accept as final an answer given 
when she was in trouble of the most trying kind.” 

The mention of Bachel’s trouble tendered him at 
once. “ What would you have me do, Mrs. Leroy ?” he 
asked, meekly. 

u Nothing. I will speak to her when I see a favour- 
able opportunity— only ,”— and here she paused and 


HARVEST. 


27 


looked at him sternly, so sternly that he shivered and 
felt himself a heartless villain on the spot — “ it is no 
use my troubling myself — certainly paining her — 
perhaps raising a hope which otherwise she would 
dismiss from her mind as having been rendered 
impossible to her by her own unfettered actions, unless 
you back me up.” 

“ Back you up,” stammered the doctor, as she paused 
and looked at him solemnly. “ I — I — don’t think I 
know what you mean ; I don’t quite follow you.” 

a Well, unless you ask her again and put all that 
nonsense and pride about being married for yourself 
and all that straight out of your head, and at once. It 
is just this way with us women, Doctor ; so long as the 
man who marries us is dejected and humble enough 
before he gets us, we rather like him to give himself 
airs about bullying us afterwards. Do you see ? ” 

“ No, I don’t,” said he, stoutly. “ Do you mean to 
say that the Major bullies you ? ” 

“ Pretty well — pretty well,” with a laugh. “ As you 
must know, he very often positively forbids me to do 
things, and I always have to give in.” 

“ Ah ! things that you don’t want to do,” put in the 
disappointed lover, shrewdly. “ I should like to see 
the Major try to forbid anything you had set your heart 
upon, Mrs. Leroy.” 

“ Ah ! not such a fool as he looks — upon my word, 
Rachel might do worse, and she would get used to his 
appearance in next to no time — Well,” she said aloud, 
“ then I am to speak to her ? ” 

“ If you please,” he answered. 

Thus prepared, Mrs. Leroy went by-and-by into her 
young visitor’s room. 


28 


HARVEST. 


“ May I come in, dear ? ” she asked, sweetly. 

“ Oh ! yes,” Rachel answered. 

“ I wanted to ask yon,” she began, then broke off 
short. . “ Why, my dear, you’ve been crying. What’s 
the matter ? ” 

Rachel’s tears began to flow again instantly. 

“ I — I — oh ! it’s nothing.” 

“ Nothing ? Oh ! don’t tell me that, dearie ; it must 
have been something to make you cry like this. What 
is it ? Has Dr. Dealy ? ” 

“Yes, he has,” Rachel flashed out, “and I hate 
him.” 

“ But, my dear ” Mrs. Leroy began. 

“It’s no use your saying one word in his favour, 
Mrs. Leroy,” Rachel cried, “ he is unkind and incon- 
siderate, and — and if he wasn’t, it wouldn’t make any 
difference. I don’t like him, and I never did like him, 
and I never shall like him, so there’s an end of it.” 

“ But, my dear ” 

“Yes, I know — he is pretty well off, and he’s good , and 
he’s dreadfully fond of me, and it would be such an 
excellent thing for me, and after a bit I shouldn’t even 
know that I’d had a father and lost him, and all the rest 
of it. But I don’t like him, Mrs. Leroy, and I won’t 
marry him, so there.” 

“ Well, but, my dear ” 

“ Oh ! I know — I know all you are going to say ; if 
you can respect your husband, that’s all that is neces- 
sary, and love will come. And you married your 
husband just to get rid of him Ah ! it’s all very well, 
out your husband is one of the handsomest men in the 
Service — I daresay it was easy enough to you. If 1 
had had a father as hideous as Dr. Dealy, I might get 


HARVEST. 


29 


used to it too. But I’m not going to try — It’s no use 
your saying a word, Mrs. Leroy,” she added, as that 
lady opened her mouth in an attempt to get a word in, 
“ I’m not going to do it — not if there wasn’t another 
man in all the world. I’d rather go out and scrub 
floors for a living — -I’d rather starve than sell my soul 
for a home. I wouldn’t marry him if he had millions 
and millions, and was a duke into the bargain ” — and 
then she turned away and shut her lips tightly, as if 
wild horses should not drag another word out of her. 

“ And,” said Mrs. Leroy to her Major half an hour 
later, “ what more could I say?” 




CHAPTER 1 1 L 

GOING HOME. 

“Be cheerful, and seek not external help, nor the tranquility 
Which others give. A man must stand alone, not be kept erect by 
others "—Marcus Aurelius. 

R ACHEL POWER did not see her adorer again 
before she left Jeypore. It was through no fault 
of his; and Mrs. Leroy gave him all the help which lay in 
her power, by trying to persuade her obstinate young 
visitor at least to see him once more. 

“ I think you ought to do so, Rachel, dear,” she urged ; 
“because he was your father’s friend, and he was very 
kind and attentive to him ; and I think he would have 
wished you to be nice to him, even if you did not 
choose to marry him.” 

But Rachel was obdurate. 

“ Dear Mrs. Leroy,” she said ; w you have been every- 
thing that is good and kind and considerate to me in my 
time of trouble, and as long as I live I shall never, 
never be able to forget it — I shall never want to be able 
to forget it. But Dr. Dealy has been neither one nor 
the other, or he could never have dared to think about 
marriage at all before my poor darling was well taken 
away. And he was not a friend of my father’s — never. 
Father always used to say — 4 Dealy ’s a good chap and 
all that and, by Jove, I respect him for it — yes, that I 


HARVEST. 


31 


do ; but all tbe same lie’s such, an unmitigated ass 1 
can't stand him, and that’s the truth.’ Now, Mrs. 
Leroy, would you like to marry a man that you had 
always heard called an unmitigated ass ever since you 
had known him ? ” 

“ Perhaps not,” answered the older lady, unable to 
restrain a laugh ; “ but I don’t ask you to marry him, 
my dear, since you are so set against it; I only think 
that it would be kind and polite to see him before you 
go, that is all.” 

“ Much better not,” returned Rachel. “ If I did, he 
would be stupid enough to think I was inviting him 
to renew his offer, and I can’t bear it, Mrs. Leroy, I 
cannot really. It’s bad enough to lose all that made 
the world pleasant to you at one blow without having 
annoyances of this kind thrust upon you ; and I — I 
shall scream if he comes here — I’m quite sure I shall ; 
I shan’t be able to help it. 

“ Then he shall not come,” said Mrs. Leroy, kindly. 

She kept her word, and during the short time that 
Rachel remained in Jeypore she was not vexed by the 
presence of the man whom she had refused to marry : 
and, after all, it was but for a short time. Rachel was 
of age — was two and twenty, in fact; and her father had 
left everything that he possessed to her absolutely and 
unconditionally, so that by the time his effects had been 
sold and his few debts paid, his affairs were practically 
in order and Rachel was free to do as she would and to 
go when and where she chose ; and, as a matter ol 
course, she chose to carry out her father’s last wish to 
the very letter, and to set out without loss of time to 
seek the protection of her grandfather, General 
Vandeleur. 


32 


HARVEST. 


To him she had written a few days after her father’s 
death, while their house was yet untouched, explaining 
her position and her father’s wish that she should seek 
his protection, and telling him that as soon as her 
affairs were settled she should go straight to him. 
“ Indeed,” she ended, “ I shall most likely be on my 
way to England, where I have never been, by the time 
that you receive this.” 

To this she received no reply, nor, in fact, did she 
expect to do so. If General Vandeleur had received 
her letter, she fancied that it was just within the bounds 
of possibility that he might send her a cablegram to say 
she would be welcome ; but when the day came for her 
to leave the shelter of Major Leroy’s kind and 
hospitable roof and start for “ home ” — the old country 
which they all call home in India, even those who have 
never seen it — no such message had come, and she was 
almost sure that he had not yet received the news. 

Poor girl, it was a terrible wrench when she found 
herself face to face with the parting from her old life ; 
when one after another of those whom she had known 
in the happy and careless days which had gone by for 
ever, came and said “ good-bye,” wishing her luck and 
happiness in the new and strange life to which she was 
going. And then there was the last visit to the 
doctor’s grave — the grave which she would probably 
never see or deck with flowers again ; and it was here 
that she came nearest to breaking down altogether. 

“ I am going quite away, dear,” she whispered to the 
burnt bare sods and the bright fresh flowers which she 
had just laid there — “ but to do your bidding, just 
what you told me. I am going to do it to the very 
letter.” 


HARVEST. 


83 


But at last this and all her other farewells were over. 
She had kissed Mrs. Leroy for the last time, and that 
kind woman had wept and sobbed over her as if it was 
a parting for ever ; and then with streaming eyes and a 
choking throat she felt the train begin to move, and she 
was already on her way “ home.” 

She was not alone — although Jeypore was a twenty 
hours’ journey from Bombay, Major Leroy was taking 
her thus far on her journey that he might see her safe 
on board the steamer, and himself put her in the 
captain’s special care. And this, too, was soon over, 
and she found herself with her escort on the snowy deck 
of the steamer. 

“ There, I think you will be all right now, my dear,” 
said the Major, kindly — “ there’s nothing like being in 
the captain’s care to ensure comfort, and Nellie has been 
home in this ship and out again. Ah ! Harrington,” 
he exclaimed, as a young man in the lightest and 
coolest of garments approached them, “ is that you ?” 

The young man took off his hat. “ Why, Major,” he 
cried, “ is that you ? ” Are you going home ? Is Mrs. 
Leroy on board ? ” 

“ No such luck,” answered the Major, with a laugh ; 
“ I only wish we were. No, I’ve come down to bring 
Miss Power and see her safely off. By-the-bye, let me 
introduce you to Miss Power. Mr. Harrington, of the 
Seashire Regiment.” 

Mr. Harrington took off his hat again, and Rachel 
bowed ; the Major asked a question. 

“ Are you going home, Harrington ? ” 

“Yes, Major, I am ; and, thank heaven, I’ve done my 
last service in India.” 

“ Really ; are you leaving ? ” 

0 


54 


HARVEST. 


u No ; I’m exchanging to the White Horse.” 

“You don’t say so ? And with whom ? ” asked the 
Maj A ~ deeply interested in this bit of fresh news. 

“Wi h Jack Loftus,” Harrington answered. 

“ Ja k Loftus? — why — what does that mean?” 

“Monte Carlo, I believe, Major; pity, isn’t it?” 
Harrington replied carelessly. “ However, it suits me 
down to the ground, for I had always a fancy for the 
White Horse, and I suppose it suits Loftus — his 
"convenience, if not his fancy.” 

Then he turned to Each el with a pleasant and 
winning manner, for which' he was noted wherever he 
was known. 

“ So we are to be companions for the next fortnight, 
if not further ! I suppose you leave the boat at Brindisi ? ” 

“No; I am going to Southampton,” she answered. 

Her manner was as gracious and winning as his 
own, and her voice was so rich and musical that he 
looked at her with closer attention. Yes, she was 
wonderfully attractive, with her great dreamy eyes and 
her ruffled fairish hair, her soft pale skin, and her tall, 
slender, graceful figure! Yes; she was wonderfully 
attractive ; had a chic air too — looked like a well-born 
woman, every inch of her, and — and Mr. Valentine 
Harrington felt, with a certain glow of self-satisfaction, 
that he should enjoy the voyage upon which he was 
about to start uncommonly well. 

After a little while the time came for them to start, 
and there was a cry of “any more for the shore.” 
Major Leroy took Each el’s hand, a trembling little 
hand, and bade her good-bye and God-speed. 

“ Good-bye, my dear. God bless you always,” he said, 
huskily ; “ and remember that if ever you are not 


HARVEST. 


85 

comfortable, and you want to come back to India, or 
you want help of any kind, you have only to write to 
the wife, and we will do anything and everything that 
lies in our power.” 

The scalding tears rushed into Rachel’s soft eyes, 
and her lips quivered. 

“ How good you are,” she faltered. 

“ Nay, my dear, I hope you will never need help of 
any kind. Still, I mean every word I say, and I hope 
you believe it,” he returned, hurriedly. “ Good-bye, 
my dear, good-bye, God bless you,” — and then he 
pressed her two hands hard, looked at her doubtfully 
for a moment, then bent his head forward and made a 
faltering little dab at her cheek, as a little bird might 
make a timid little peck at a peach, and with another 
“ God bless you,” turned and fairly bolted. 

For a moment Rachel Power was almost convulsed 
with the pain of parting from the last of her friends ; 
then as the tears cleared away from her eyes, she 
encountered the intense amusement in Harrington’s 
merry orbs ; and laughter, like yawning, being infectious, 
I am bound to say the absurdity of the Major’s farewell 
dawned upon her, and she went off straightway into a 
perfect agony of laughter, in which Mr. Harrington 
joined. 

“ ’Pon my word, that was fine,” remarked her new 
friend, when he had recovered himself enough to speak ; 
and then he added in a very small voice, scarcely, 
indeed, above a whisper, “ and, by Jove, I never knew 
what it was to envy old Leroy before.” 

Rachel, however, was busily waving her handkerchief 
as a final good-bye, and if she heard him, made not the 
smallest sign of it. 

C 2 


CHAPTER IV. 


THE SEEDTIME OF PLEASURE. 

“ Do your duty honestly, because it is your duty, and it will then 
be given to you to perceive that the honest course is also the 
expedient one.” — W hately. 

R ACHEL did not make many friends on * board 
the Saracen . Being alone for the first time in 
her life, and in dire trouble, she made no effort to put 
herself on speaking terms with the other passengers. 
To all those* Tyho approached her she was gentle and 
graciously pleasant, but the advance never came from 
her. 

The ship was very full, and on the whole she was left 
to her own devices. All the other passengers were 
strangers to her, and the fact of her deep mourning, so 
evidently new and for a very near relative, was suffi- 
cient to keep the majority of people at a distance, and 
besides that, she was so quiet and so sad that most of 
them felt instinctively that she would not care to join in 
their little dances, their round games, their merry- 
makings, and their frivolities. 

She had her own chair in her own corner on deck, 
put there for her by the captain himself and taken from 
his own cabin ; and there she sat, hour after hour, 
Bti' ohing industriously at her embroidery work, wrapt 


HARVEST. 


37 


in her own thoughts of past and future days, and never 
troubling herself even to raise her head when some un- 
usually gay burst of laughter floated towards her. 

Generally Mr. Harrington was in the habit of plant* 
ing his chair as near to hers as he could well get it, and 
often while she was working would read to her or talk 
to her, telling .her in his smooth winning tones of his 
past life and adventures, of the hopes he had for the 
future, and, very often, of the delight and satisfaction 
he had in the present. No ; I do not mean that he 
put the thought in those words — no, no — Valentine 
Harrington was too clever to call a spade a spade at 
any time ; but he told her in general terms what a 
happy thing it was to be alive, and how, until he found 
hxmself on board of the Saracen on his homeward 
journey, he had never really realized the fact, never 
realized the full measure of joyousness and bliss that 
life held. 

“If only,” he ended one day, when they were steaming 
down the Red Sea and nobody happened to be within 
hearing — “if only I weren’t a poor devil without two 
sixpences to rub together.” 

“ Well, you seem to get along very well with only 
one,” said Rachel, smiling, without looking up from a 
very distorted sun which she was patiently embroider- 
ing with flaming orange silks of different shades ; at 
which Val Harrington gave a great sigh, and fell to 
trying to match her silks with one another, only to 
get them all into a hopeless tangle. 

Rachel, after a moment or two, became aware of his 
occupation. “ Stay, you need not spoil my silks because 
of those sixpences,” she said, and laid a white and slender 
hand upon him to stop him from making still further 


88 


HARVEST. 


havoc — “ remember I cannot get any more till I reach 
England.” 

I could hardly tell why it was, but some strange and 
unusual thrill — strange and unusual to her, at least, 
though 1 fear an old enough sensation to him — must 
have passed from his hand to hers, for she looked up 
and their eyes met — met and gazed for a' moment, when 
hers fell and she took up her work again and began 
embroidering quickly, and very badly, bending her head 
low down over the flaming sun that she might hide her 
blcshes. 

Yal Harrington looked round — the deck was quite 
deserted, and he edged his chair a trifle nearer to hers. 

“ Rachel,” he said in a whisper — a whisper which 
thrilled her through and through, and seemed to set her 
very heart on fire — “ Rachel, dear, what is the matter?” 

“ Nothing,” she said quickly, and worked harder at 
the flaming sun than ever. 

He put his hand out gently, and quietly took her 
work away. “ Rachel,” he said, “ wha,t made you look 
at me like that ?” 

“ I don’t know,” she answered in a troubled way. 

“Shall I tell you?” he asked, dropping the em- 
broidery on the deck and taking her hand in his. 

Rachel said nothing, only tried to draw her hand 
away. 

“ Shall I tell you ?” he repeated. 

“ If you like,” she answered in a very low voice. 

He edged a trifle nearer still, and took possession of 
the other hand also. 

“ Because you love me,” he said. 

She started at the words, and tried to draw her hands 
away. “ Oh 1 no, no,” she cried. 


HARVEST. 


89 


“ Oli ! yes, yes,” lie answered, “ and wliy not ? Why 
should you not love me when I love you ? Tell me 
that?” 

“ But you ” she began. 

“I love you? Oh, Rachel, my darling, can you 
doubt it ? ” 

“It is so soon,” she murmured. 

“ Not at all. True, it is only a week — but in that 
week we have been together always, except just through 
the short hours of the hot nights. They have seemed 
endless to me and intolerable,” he ended ; “ so I have 
stayed on deck as long as I could lure you to stop ; and 
I have been up in the morning — well,” with a smile, 
“ you know how early I have been up, don’t you ? ” 

“ You have been up early,” she admitted. Somehow 
her new love was making her shy — she, who had been 
used to a society in which the masculine element out- 
numbered the feminine by some ten to one. 

“ Have we not seen mofre of each other in these few 
days, being here,” waving his hand, “ than we might 
have done in as many years in an ordinary garrison ? ” 
he asked, triumphantly. “ Besides, love that is spon- 
taneous is worth fifty thousand of the loves that are 
born of anything but love. Is that not so ?” 

“ Perhaps ; I don’t know. I have never been in love 
in my life,” she answered. 

“ Until now,” he said, by way of correction. 

“ Until now,” she repeated, with another swift shy 
glance, which made her altogether adorable to him. 

“My love,” he whispered ; “ my dear love.” Then he 
glanced round again— yes, the coast was clear still, 
at least, though there might be others on deck there 
was nobody in sight, so he bent his handsome head and 


40 


HARVEST. 


kissed her hands. — u In token of my absolute submis- 
sion,” he said, gallantly ; “ this, in token of my love,” 
he added, and kissed her on the lips. So for half an 
hour they remained in paradise — in Eden ! Then the 
sound of voices roused them from their dream, and 
Rachel came to herself with a start. 

“ Let us tell nobody,” she said, hurriedly. 

“As you like, my love,” he answered. The next 
moment a couple, who had been keeping all the ship 
alive and expectant by a violent flirtation, came gaily 
round the funnels and went to lean sentimentally over 
the side of the ship, not half a dozen yards away. 

Rachel, with a look, rose and went quietly off to her 
cabin, leaving Val Harrington to put her work and 
silks together and stow them in the seat of her chair 
so as to be ready when she should come out again. 

She wanted to be alone — she wanted to think ; to 
think how strange and wonderful it all was, that she, 
who had been but so lately bankrupt of love, should all 
at once find herself so rich — so much richer than she had 
ever been before. How wonderful it was ; and what a 
blessing that she should be able to go to her grand- 
father and say, “ I only want you to be kind to me for 
a little time, until I am married.” 

And then she began to wonder, with a new and fresh 
interest, what would her grandfather be like and what 
he would say to this handsome lover of hers, who, if he 
was not rich, was everything else that was most desir- 
able in a husband — young, comely — comely, nay, beau- 
tiful — good, yes, she would swear that he was good, 
clever and brave — aye, a goodly list of recommenda- 
tions for a man to have. Surely, when she came to him 
as the promised wife of such a man, he would not dis- 


HARVEST. 


41 


own her — oh ! disown her, how could she think such a 0 
thing of a man whom she had never seen — perhaps he 
had pined and fretted after his daughter who had run 
away from him, and perhaps he was longing for an 
opportunity of forgiving the offence which had been 
given him four and twenty years ago. 

And then all at once a new thought entered her 
mind — supposing that she told Val about her grand- 
father, he would probably know all about it, would 
know that he was rich and powerful ; and then sup- 
posing that the old General would have nothing to say 
to her ! Would not Yal have reasonable cause to be 
disappointed ? Yes ! Then would it not be better for 
her to say nothing about the General ; to say only that 
she was going to a near relation of her mother’s — to 
profess herself exactly what she was, a poor and almost 
friendless girl, with not a thousand pounds in all the 
world that she could call her own ? Then if the worst 
happened with regard to her grandfather, she would be 
neither better nor worse to him than she had ever been, 
and she would have at least positive proofs of the value 
of his love for her. 

But, oh! what nonsense she was thinking; surely the 
sudden flood of joy after the dullness of her great 
sorrow had been too much for her. How could she 
have a suspicion in her mind about one who was so 
frank, so honest and good ? Why, not an hour ago he 
had bent and kissed her hand : “ This in token of my 
absolute submission ” ; and then he had kissed her on 
the lips : “ In token of my love.” 

Aye, that was so ; but Valentine Harrington had 
been very careful that there was no one by to see 
him 1 



CHAPTER V. 


THROUGH THE STRAITS. 


"In these things, place no confidence in a woman. She never 
brings to her tongue what is in her heart ; she never speaks out 
what is on her tongue ; and she never tells what she is doing.” 


Arabian Nights. 


ITH the burden of what almost amounted to a 



secret on her mind, Rachel was not so free in 


her intercourse with Valentine Harrington as she might 
otherwise have been, as indeed, probably, she would 
have been. She had, in a measure, to be very careful 
what she said — she constantly found herself leading up 
to the subject of the future, and from this she always 
edged away as quickly as she could, confining all her 
conversation as nearly as possible to the present, a pro- 
ceeding which suited Mr. Valentine Harrington remark- 
ably well — he being essentially one of those careless, 
happy-go-lucky men, who never do to-day what they 
can possibly put off till to-morrow ; who live for to-day 
and to-day only, making time present as near an 
approach to Paradise as they can, and treating the 
time to come as a horrid nuisance to be put on one 
side until the march of the hours should force it upon 
their notice. 

So it happened that these two young people left the 


HARVEST. 


43 


fafcure altogether out of their discussions, and lived in 
the present, as only the young who are in love can 
live. 

Once, however, Yal Harrington came very near to 
the secret which lay like a lump upon Rachel’s mind. 
They were sitting in their favourite place, just as they 
had sat on the day when he had first kissed her, she 
with her embroidery, and he with only the delight of 
watching her swift white hands as the needle went 
regularly in and out of her work, to occupy him ; and 
suddenly he asked her a question which sent the quick 
red blood to her cheeks and made her heart beat hard 
and fast. 

“ Little mouse,” he said, caressingly, “ you know I 
am not going off the ship at Brindisi ? ” 

“ I did not know it,” she said, trembling. 

“ Is it likely ? ” he returned, “ here we are almost 
alone together ; nobody seems to want to bother us in 
any way, or interfere with us, or even to talk scandal 
about us. Do you think I would miss all those long 
and lovely days together ? God knows ” he ended with 
a sigh, “ when we may be so completely together 
again.” 

Rachel looked up quickly and opened her mouth as 
if to speak, then she checked the words that were 
actually on her lips and bent her head down again. 
Harrington went on speaking. 

“Do you know, little one,” he said, with another 
sigh and a complete change of tone, “ that you have 
never told me a single word about these relatives of 
yours to whom you are going? Not even their name.” 

Rachel looked up again in infinite dismay. “ I 
know,” she said, meekly, “ and — and — Yal dear, would 


44 ) 


HARVEST. 


you mind my not telling you anything until — until I 
have seen them ? ” 

“ Until you have seen them — why, my darling ? ” 
he exclaimed. 

“ I have never been in England,” she returned, “ and 
if you will trust me, T would rather not say one word 
about them until I have seen them. I will tell you 
every thing the first time we meet in England, if you 
ask me. But to tell you now would only be to tell you 
a name. I have never seen them, and — and I might 
give you a wrong impression about them, and — and you 
will trust me, won’t you, dear ? ” 

“ Of course I will,” he cried, with a gay laugh. 
“ What difference can the names of relations, whom you 
have never seen, make to me ? I love you, my sweet- 
heart, not your relations. Only I wondered what you 
would be doing and where you would be when I saw 
you again, that was all. I wonder where will you be ?” 

“ I don’t know,” she answered dreamily. “ I don’t 
know at all.” 

“Then, how shall I find you again ?” 

“ Give me your address, and I will write to you 
every day,” she answered. 

“ I will. I shall be in town. The Army and Navy 
Club will always find me.” 

“ I will write to you there,” she said, gravely. 

After this they slipped back into their usual way of 
talking, dreamy discussions on all manner of subjects, 
anything or everything rather than the subject of their 
future life. 

To Rachel, Valentine Harrington had told her as 
little of his affairs as she had told him of hers. Since 
the day when he had told her that he was a poor devil 


HARVEST. 


45 


without two sixpences to rub together he had never 
mentioned money to her in any way, and she was 
utterly ignorant of what his ideas of an income might 
be — of how much or how little money made a man a 
poor devil without two sixpences to rub together. 

She was entirely ignorant too of his family, and as 
much so of his past as she was of his future; and though 
she was anxious, even eager to know everything there 
was to know about him, yet, whilst she herself was 
keeping a certain portion of the truth back from him, 
she could not reasonably expect him to be less reticent 
with her ; and yet, Rachel did not think somehow that he 
had any intention of being reticent. 

She puzzled herself a good many times about those 
two sixpences of his. Even to her, who had lived in 
the everyday luxury of Indian life, he seemed to be an 
unusually well-provided young man. For instance, 
he had silver cigarette cases, match-boxes — oh ! yes, yes, 
I know that I am speaking in the plural — flasks, and all 
such things of unusual costliness. He had shot tigers 
in central India, had been up in Kashmir, and knew all 
the principal hill-stations well ; he talked about his 
“tats” until Rachel was quite intimately acquainted 
with at least twenty of his “ gees,” of one sort or other, 
and seemed, during his three years of Indian life, to 
have had a remarkably good time, and to have had 
almost unlimited means at his command. 

And' yet he was “ a poor devil, without two sixpences 
to rub together.” Rachel could not make it out at all. 
However, one thing was certain — as certain, at least, as 
she could be on his word alone — which was that he was 
not in debt ; for one day, when they were talking 
together on deck, he told her a great deal about a 


46 


HARVEST. 


certain friend of his, who, to use his language, “ he’s 
come a regular cropper, and would probably never be 
able to right himself again as long as he lived.” 

“ But he was in debt, poor chap,” said Valentine 
Harrington, in commiserating tones ; “ and after all, 
a poor chap how’s in debt goes and does things in a sort 
of desperation that he’d never do in his sober senses ; 
it’s most of anything like being drunk is getting into 
debt — at least, so I’m told. 1 was never either myself, 
but that’s what other fellows tell me.” 

So she felt sure that he was not in debt — but well, 
well, she was reticent with him and she must not 
expect him to be ready at first to tell her everything 
about himself. Besides, some men are like that, she 
argued ; they would rather talk about anything than 
themselves, and although she felt sure that he would 
tell her everything about himself that there was to tell, 
were she to ask him, yet, likely enough, unless she did 
ask him he would never think of it at all. 

Yes, she must wait ; wait patiently until she had 
seen her grandfather, and arranged in some way what 
her life in the immediate future would be; then she 
would tell him everything — would say to him, “ I kept 
my grandfather’s name from you because he is rich and 
powerful, and if he disowned me you might have been 
disappointed. I have only been reticent because I 
want you to love me for myself, and myself alone ” — 
and when Rachel Power reached this point she smiled 
tenderly to herself, for she knew but too well what his 
answer would De. 



CHAPTER VI. 

A MIXED PLEASURE. 

M The good things of life are not to be had singly, but come to u§ 
with a mixture ; like a schoolboy’s holiday, with a task affixed to the 
tail of it.” — Chables Lamb. 

T HE Saracen was steaming up tlie Channel, and all 
aboard of her were in a state of wild excitement, 
and everyone was more or less exceedingly busy in 
packing up tbeir belongings so that they might not 
have to stop one moment longer on the ship than they 
could help. 

During the past week Rachel Power had been almost 
the only woman on board who had been able to appear 
on deck, for the weather had been exceptionally rough 
even for January, and most of the ladies and many of 
the men had been glad to keep the shelter of their 
cabins. But now that the worst was over, they had 
begun to come upon deck again, and to make little 
jokes with one another, and to congratulate themselves 
on being nearly home at last. 

Not having been ill in crossing the bay, Rachel had 
been able to put her things together gradually, and 
therefore, as they drew near to the shores of the country 
which was her home though she had never seen it, she 
was able to spend all the hours of daylight on deck, 


48 


HARVEST. 


eagerly watching for every sight of the coast, and 
learning all manner of things from Valentine about the 
different places which they passed. 

“ Little mouse, you are cold,” he said, commiseratingly, 
when they had been standing for an hour or more 
watching the land in the distance. 

“ Yes ; I am very cold, Val. Is it always so cold as 
this ? ” she asked, piteously. 

“ Well, at this time of year it pretty nearly always 
is,” he admitted. “ I must buy you a seal’s-skin coat 
as soon as I can take you out in Town ; you will need 
it after being in India all your life. Don’t you think 
you had better come down now ? ” 

“ No, not yet; I shall be just as cold down there,” 
she replied. 

“ Then slip my ulster on over your coat,” he urged, 
for he was uneasy about her ; and as she made a move- 
ment of assent, continued : “of course, you know, 
darling, it won’t be quite like this on shore ; I mean it 
is always piercingly cold on the water, and besides that, 
on shore you have the protection of the hills or the 
houses. Yet it is cold every where in England compared 
with what you’ve been used to.” 

“Yes; I suppose so,” she said, shrinking cosily into 
the big coat as if she were only too glad of the extra 
protection. 

For a few minutes they were silent. “ Let us go 
and sit down,” said Val; “you must be tired of stand- 
ing so long.” 

She looked a little unwilling, but he urged her still 
further ; “ Do, darling ; we have been so happy in our 
own little corner these few weeks ; let us have another 
hour together — do ! ” 


HARVEST 


4 <> 

Thus cowxed, Rachel left the side of the ship and sat 
down in her chair, with a mist before her eyes and a 
great lump in her throat which would not be swallowed, 
try as she might. 

“ Let me tuck the fur well round you,” he said, 
taking up the great bear-skin rug in which he 
had wrapped her each day since she began to feel 
the cold. “ Why, my darling, you’re crying,” he 
exclaimed; “why, my love, is it so hard to part, 
even for a little while ? Oh ! my dear, my dear, 
don’t fret like this ; we shall be together again almost 
before we know that we have been apart from one 
another.” 

“ I don’t know,” whispered she, half-sobbing, “ I have 
a horrible feeling somehow that we shall never be to- 
gether again.” 

Valentine Harrington fairly laughed aloud. “ Oh, 
my dearest, what nonsense ; I, too, have a presentiment, 
but it is that we shall be together again in a very short 
time, and that we shall be all the world to one another 
for ever.” 

Rachel made a great effort and choked down her 
tears and the inconvenient something in her throat 
which was such a trouble to her just then, and forced 
herself to smile and talk to him of the good time they 
would have when they met in London. 

“ I daresay,” he wound up after a long description, 
“ you won’t think much of it at first ; likely enough 
you’ll think it ugly, hideous even — a good many people 
do, just to begin with — but after a time, when you get to 
know the lines of the place, you’ll think as I do, that 
there isn’t such a spot for having a real good time in all 
the great wide world.” 


D 


HARVEST. 


50 


" Do you really think so ? ” she asked. “Ah, that 
was just what my father always used to say to me.” 

“ I am sure of it. I must take you sight-seeing at 
once,” 

“ Yes. I want to see the Tower and Westminster 
Abbey — you’ll take me to those, won’t you ?” 

Valentine looked a little doubtful. “ Oh — ah — well, 
yes, I suppose so, if you have set your mind on it. 
Only, frankly, my darling, I never heard of anyone 
going to either of those places except on a matter of 
business, you know. I have been to the Tower. I 
went down to see a fellow who was quartered there once 
— uncommonly good time of it he seemed to have too ; 
but I didn’t go into the show.” 

“The show!” cried Eachel, opening her soft eyes 
widely. 

“ Yes — the — the — well, really, dearest, I don’t know 
what they do inside there ; but there is some kind of a 
show there; I’m sure of that.” 

“And you never went — you never saw Tower Hill 
and the place where Lady Jane Grey was beheaded, and 
the tower where the little princes were murdered ? You 
never saw that ? ” 

“ Never,” he answered, promptly. 

“ And you have never been to Westminster Abbey ? ” 

“ Well, I have been there. I once went to a funeral 
there ; but I’ve never been round as a show, never.” 

“ But I shall want to go there first of any place I go 
to,” she cried, enthusiastically. 

“ So you shall. We will go on long pilgrimages all 
over everywhere, and your soul shall be satisfied. 
Don’t think me a Goth, my darling — it isn’t because I 
don’t take an interest in these places, but the fact is, I 


HARVEST. 


51 


know a good many people in London, and I’ve never 
lived there, you see ; So when I’ve had a few days or a 
few weeks’ leave, I have always had more engagements 
than I could get through.” 

“ And now ? ” cried Rachel, wondering how his 
engagements would let him find time to take her every- 
where. 

“ I never knew anyone before who attracted me 
enough to make engagements of no importance,” he 
said, tenderly, at which Rachel turned upon him with 
an inffeable smile of absolute contentment and trust. 

“ That is the sweetest thing you have ever said to me, 
Val,” she said, softly. 

For a little time they were perfectly quiet and happy 
The deck was deserted, and around them the shades of 
evening were fast creeping. Then suddenly Rachel 
asked a question — almost the first direct one which she 
had ever put to him. 

u Then your father and mother don’t live in London ?** 
she said, speaking out just what was in her mind. 

“ My father and mother are both dead, dear,” he said 
quietly. “ I always stay with my godfather when I am 
in town.” 

“ Oh ! I see — and your godfather ?” 

“ My godfather is a very charming old gentleman,” 
said Yal gaily. a And when you see him I am sure 
you will say so ; but, at present, my darling, it is far 
too cold to stay here discussing him or anyone else. 
Pray let us go down, or we shall be petrified, which 
would be a pleasant thing for you. Come ! ” 

He rose as he spoke, and Rachel, who, in spite of her 
brave words, was shivering, rose too ; in truth, not sorry 
to be given a good excuse for going below. 

D 2 


52 


HARVEST. 


So that last day came to an end, and a few hours 
later they were alongside of the quay at Southampton, 
and had come to their journey’s end. Well, no, not 
quite that, but the Saracen had come to the end of her 
journey, and her passengers had, many of them, not 
much farther to go to be at the end of theirs. 

Rachel was a little bewildered by the bustle of land- 
ing, although Valentine took as much of the trouble off 
her shoulders as he could. And at last they got fairly 
away from Southampton, and were gliding towards the 
big city in which he had promised she should have a 
real good time. 

“ Little mouse,” he said, when they had passed 
Aldershot, and she had peered out into the darkness to 
try and see what kind of place it was and succeeded 
very badly, “I shall have to take you to Madame 
Tussaud’s one day.” 

“ I should like to see that — what made you think of 
it ? Have you ever been there ? ” 

“jOh, yes ! it’s great fun, and it’s easy to get at too. 
What made me think of it? Well, I was just going 
over the places you would be likely to care about. I 
must take you to see the pictures — there are heaps of 
picture galleries in Bond Street — you’d like to see those, 
wouldn’t you ? Do you care for pictures at all ? ” 

For a moment Rachel Power fairly gasped for breath. 
Would she like to go to the picture galleries ? Did she 
care about pictures ? Why, could it be possible that she 
had never told him that she had been in Rome, and had 
studied art there for more than two years ? It seemed 
incredible ; and yet, evidently, he had no knowledge of 
that other life of hers, which was devoted to art ; of 
that other self, which lived and breathed only for art ! 


HARVEST. 


53 


It was incredible ; but in tbe twinkling of an eye she 
remembered that she had given all her time to needle- 
work during the voyage ; that she had talked singularly 
little, being full of sad thoughts to begin with, and then 
being as fully occupied afterwards in listening to the 
ever new and delightful conversation which flowed, 
almost without ceasing, from his lips. 

“ Yes, I should like to see all the picture-galleries,” 
she said, with difficulty repressing a smile and thinking 
how she would keep the secret until they met in 
London, and then she would show him her medals of 
distinction and the letters full of praise which she had 
received while in the Holy City — the cradle of Art. 

“ I suppose your people will come to meet you ? ” he 
remarked after a while. 

“ I don’t know — it is possible ; but I don’t fancy they 
will. You see, I only said in my letter that it was 
probable I should come by the Saraceil , and indeed, I 
think it is very likely they will not think of it. But I 
will go to Morley’s Hotel, please — that was where my 
father told me to go if I came home by myself. By 
myself — oh ! ” laying her hand on his and looking up 
at him with her great soft eyes filled with tenderness 
and gratitude, u how glad he would have been if he 
had known about you — he so wanted to know that I 
should be safe and happy, and see how soon I am both.” 

Valentine put his arm round her and drew her close 
to him. 

“ And you are happy, are you not, my love ? ” he 
asked. u You do love me ? ” 

“Yes, I love you,” she answered. 

“You are quite sure ? ” 

44 1 am quite sure/’ §he said, steadily. 


54 


HARVEST. 


He held her closer still. 

“ If ever I asked you to do something for me, to make 
a sacrifice for me, I wonder if you would do it ? ” 

“ I think I should,” smiling at him. 

“ You only think,” reproachfully. 

“ I am as certain as I can be of anything, that I 
should do it,” she answered. 

“ That is good. Perhaps some day I shall come to 
you and try you.” 

“ You mean you will ask me to give you up freely and 
willingly ? ” she said. 

Valentine Harrington burst out laughing. 

“ Good heavens, child, nothing was further from my 
thoughts ! ” he cried. “ What could have put such a 
preposterous notion into your head ? ” 

“ I don’t know,” she said timidly, and with a sigh of 
satisfaction rested her head against him and said no 
more. 

And by-and-bye they ran into Waterloo Station— to 
my mind, the most confusing of all the stations in 
London — to Rachel Power’s, the nearest approach to 
Pandemonium which she had ever seen. 

“Now, do you see any of your people?” Valentine 
asked her, briskly, while she was staring vaguely about 
wondering if London was all shouting and pushing and 
jostling like this. To Valentine it was like coming 
back to life again and beginning to live — to her it was 
like a large draught of brandy to one used to drinking 
water. 

“ My people ? I don’t know them. I shouldn’t 
know them if they were right under my nose,” she 
answered, trying to shake the feeling of confusion ofi 
her. “ Besides, I can’t go to anybody’s house at this 


nAKVEST. 


55 


time of night, and I know I look horrid. Let me go 
straight to Morley’s and get to bed, and then in the 
morning I can go to my — my people looking clean and 
respectable.” 

“ All right,” he said. “ Shall I go with you ? ” 

“ No ; go to the carriage with me, that is all,” she 
answered. 

“ Still, I think I’d better go. I’ll follow you, and see 
you get rooms and all that.” 

This, eventually, was what he did ; and in less than 
half an hour Rachel felt the cab pull up with a jerk at 
the door of a large building, painted white or drab, and 
Valentine was at the door of the cab, saying that he 
would find out if they could take her in or not. 

Certainly they could accommodate the lady, they told 
him ; so Valentine fetched her from the cab and told 
her to be sure to get some food before she weut to 
bed. 

“ I shall come round in the morning,” he said, as he 
took her hand. 

“No, not in the morning; I shall be out,” she 
answered. “ Come about five o’clock.” 

About five — very well. Take care of yourself till 
then, my dearest,” he said tenderly. Then he went out 
into the darkness ; and Rachel heard him shut the door 
of his cab, and the cab roll away. 

“I should like to have some supper sent up to 
me,” she said to the maid who had been sent for to 
show her to her room. 

“ Certainly, madam ; you will not mind a little cold 
chicken, perhaps? It is too late to have anything 
cooked ; but I could make you some tea, madam, if you 
would prefer that.” 


56 


HARVEST. 


“ I would rather have that than any thing,” cried poor 
Rachel, who all at once had begun to feel desolate. 

“You shall have it in two or three minutes, miss,” 
said the chambermaid, growing quite friendly. “ I 
daresay you’ve had rather a long journey, miss. You 
are tired and hungry.” 

“ Yes ; I have had rather a long journey,” said 
Rachel. “ I have come from India.” 

“ You shall have your tea in five minutes, miss,” said 
the woman, with a gesture as if Rachel had come all the 
way from India without so much as even tasting a single 
cup of tea on the way. Rachel sat down before the 
newly-lighted fire in the large bedroom, feeling very 
lonely and inexpressibly dreary. They were very kind, 
and at that hour of night she felt that she could not 
expect to have more comfort and attention, coming 
without warning as she had done. But the room was 
so large, and the two lighted candles on the dressing- 
table gave such an insufficient light, and the fire was 
sulky and did not seem inclined to burn. Besides that, 
she was cold and hungry, and felt as if she had not 
energy enough to begin unpacking the big box which 
was the only part of her luggage which she had asked 
to have sent up. Oh ! it was dreadful to her to be 
alone in London. She could only thank God that she 
was not alone in the world. 





CHAPTER VII. 

ALONE IN LONDON. 

“ It is a mistake to suppose that men succeed through success * 
they much oftener succeed through failure.” — S miles. 

A LTHOUGH Rachel had not been many hours in 
bed, she was up betimes in the morning, and 
certainly when she went down into the coffee-room to 
take her breakfast, and was given a comfortable table 
near the fire and quite close to a window which looked 
up the busy Strand, she looked as fair and winsome a 
damsel as ever came home to be the joy and delight of 
an offended grandfather’s heart. 

In fact, many an admiring glance was cast at the 
graceful black-robed figure as she passed along the 
room, and many more were cast at the beautiful fair face 
as she bent over the paper or let her eyes wander 
towards the thronged and busy street, the like of which 
she had never seen before. 

Rachel, on the contrary, did not pay much attention 
to the people in the room. She was accustomed to that 
kind of admiration, and just then her thoughts were 
occupied with the ordeal which lay before her — the 
meeting with the grandfather whom she had never seen, 
the old General who might or might not accept her as 
his granddaughter. 


58 


HARVEST. 


Presently the head-waiter came to see if there was 
anything else that he could get for her. 

“ Nothing else, 5 ' she said; “ but can you tell me how 
far Portland Place is from here ? 

“ Oh, yes, madam ; . it is not more than a mile or so,” 
he replied. 

“ How can I best get there ? ” she asked. 

“ In a hansom, madam ; we can call one for you at 
any moment,” he said. 

“ Thank you,” said Rachel, and looking at her watch, 
saw that it was nearly ten o’clock. 

“ Had I better go now ? ” she said to herself. “ No, 
it is too early ; Father always said everything was later 
here. I will wait for an hour at least.” 

Eventually, just at half-past eleven o’clock, she came 
down from her room, dressed for walking, and asked 
them to get her a cab. “ Do I pass any shops on the 
way ? ” she asked of the porter. 

“ Certainly, madam ; some of the best shops in 
London,” he answered. “ What kind of shops do you 
require ? ” 

“A fur shop.” 

“ You pass several, madam ; ” he said, and went down 
the steps before her, guarding her gown from the wheel 
as she got into the cab — then added to the cabman, 
“ To 200 Portland Place, and stop at a good furrier’s 
in Regent Street on the way.” 

In an incredibly short time Rachel found her- 
self at the door of Williams’s, in Regent Street, and 
there she got out, fairly shuddering in her cloth- 
coat. 

“ I have just come from India,” she said to the 
pleasant woman who came forward to wait upon her, 


HARVEST. 


59 


<c and I find the cold terrible. I see that ladies are 
wearing large capes. Will you show me some ? ” 

“ Certainly,” said the pleasant woman, promptly — 
and forthwith a great bundle of fur capes of various 
kinds was placed upon the counter, and she was invited 
to look at them. “You would not like to have a seal- 
skin coat, madam ? ” asked the pleasant woman. 

“ No, not a sealskin,” returned Rachel, quickly. 

“ They are more expensive than these, of course,” 
she said, “ but we have some at remarkably low prices 
just now.” 

“ No, not a sealskin,” Rachel answered, “ the fact is,” 
she said, suddenly feeling friendly towards the pleasant 
face and voice, “ the fact is, I have promised that the 
gentleman I am going to marry shall buy me one, but 
it won’t be for a few days, and I feel if I don’t have 
something to put between me and this piercing cold, I 
shall not be alive to wear it when it is bought.” 

“ I see, madam,” smiling, and thinking that the 
gentleman who was going to marry so sweet and fair a 
girl had done an uncommonly good thing for himself in 
winning her, “ then I should recommend you to have 
one of these large bear capes and a muff to match it — 
they are very warm and are really endless wear, and 
being a natural skin, that is undyed, there is no colour 
to come off as is the case with many other kinds of fur.” 

In the end, Rachel went away with a cape and muff, 
which made her feel and look like a different being 
altogether ; and the dark heavy fur suited her too, and 
made her fair face look fairer than it had done before. 

“ It suits you perfectly, madam,” said the pleasant 
woman, with a gesture towards the glass. 

“ I think it does,” said Rachel, turning herself round. 


60 


HARVEST. 


“ I hope the gentleman will give us the order for the 
sealskin coat, madam,” she continued. 

“ I’ll tell him to come here,” said Rachel, and then 
she went out to the cab and got in, feeling that she 
need not much mind the cold now. 

“ To Portland Place, now,” she said. 

She was there in a few minutes — the broad hand- 
some street impressed her and she began to feel awed. 
However, she got out of the cab and paid the man, and 
then she went up the steps of No. 200 with all her 
heart in her mouth. 

She pulled the handle of the bell which was marked 
“ visitors,” but there was no answer to the summons. 
She waited a good bit and wondered if the bell had 
rang. She thought she would try again, and did — and 
waited again, and all this time the heart in her mouth 
got bigger and bigger until it was like to burst. Then 
just as she was beginning to think that she would have 
to make a third attempt, the door was opened abruptly 
and flung back wide, and she found herself confronted 
by an awful personage in pepper-and-salt clothes and a 
black coat, who stood awaiting her pleasure. 

“ Is General Vandeleur at home?” she asked, shrink- 
ing behind her furs and feeling very weak and shaky 
about the knees, and very much more inclined to cry 
than anything else. 

“ General Vandeleur is out riding, ma’am,” he 
answered, very much as if she ought to have known 
of it and not have come there bothering him for 
nothing. 

“ Oh, really ! ” Rachel fairly gasped out the two 
words, the relief of not seeing him was so great. 
“ What time will he be in, do you think ? ” 


HARVEST. 


61 


She thought afterwards that if she looked half as 
frightened as she felt, her looks must have accounted 
for her grandfather’s pompous butler suddenly unbend- 
ing. He let go his hold upon the door and came a step 
forward. 

“ Well, ma’am,” he said, quite kindly, “ the General 
always rides in the morning and lunches at home after- 
wards ; and then he goes out about four and stays at 
his club till near dinner-time.” 

“ Then if I came about three o’clock?” Rachel began. 

“ I think you would be sure to find him, ma’am,” said 
the butler, affably. 

“ I will (*>me at three then,” said she, turning away. 
“ Stay, I will leave a card.” 

“ Yes, ma’am,” returned the servant. 

“ A.nd you will be sure to tell General Vandeleur that 
I came, and that I will return then ? ” 

“ Certainly, ma’am,” was the reply. 

So Rachel turned away from her grandfather’s house 
a little dulled but not disheartened. Of course she 
could not expect that after he had got her letter he 
should at once sit down and say, “ I will not leave the 
house, lest I should be out when she comes.” No ; and 
yet, she felt that she would have been very very glad if 
he had happened to be at home to receive her. 

If she had looked back she would have seen that the 
portly butler was standing on the outer step holding 
her card in his hand and looking after her. That she 
did not do, however, but walked quietly back towards 
Regent Street. But General Vandeleur’s butler stood 
and stared with all his eyes after the tall retreating 
figure, and at last turned back into the house, examining 
the card as he went. 


62 


HARVEST. 


“ H’m — it’s queer,” he remarked to himself, in a 
puzzled kind of way. “ 1 Miss Rachel Power/ and 
4 Morley’s Hotel * written in pencil underneath — 
Morley’s Hotel — and Miss Rachel Power. It’s queer, 
to say the least of it, for she’s as like the General as two 
peas.” 

Very few minutes afterwards the General returned 
from his ride ; indeed, if she had but known it, Rachel 
passed him in Regent Street. It was then getting near 
luneh-time, which meal he always ate at one o’clock to 
the very minute. He went into the library and sat 
down at the table, drawing some paper before him as if 
to write a letter. The butler followed him and stood 
in an attitude of respectful attention calculated to 
attract his notice. 

44 Well, Jones, what is it ? ” he asked, looking up. 

44 A lady called this morning, sir,” said Jones, laying 
the card on the table beside him. 

The general took up the card and glanced at the 
name, then put it down as if it had bitterly offended 
him. 

“ Very well,” he said curtly, and took up his pen. 

Jones coughed deferentially — “ I beg your pardon, 
sir, but the lady seemed very much disappointed that 
you were out, sir.” 

“ Oh ! ” the old man uttered the word in a perfectly 
wooden tone, without in any way satisfying the servant’s 
natural curiosity. 

Jones coughed again when he found that his master 
was not going to say anything else. 

“ And she particularly wished me to say, sir, that she 
should call again about three o’clock this afternoon.” 

“ Oh !— very well ! — That will do, Jones.” 


HARVEST. 


63 


Again there was no significance in the old General's 
tones, only an unmoved expression of comprehension of 
the information which had just been given to him, in 
the face of which the butler had no choice but to leave 
the room. 

In about a quarter-of-an-hour he returned to inform 
his master that lunch was ready, and being still 
extremely curious about the young lady who bore 
so strong a resemblance to him, cast a searching 
glance at the table to see if the card was still there. 
Yes, it was there, and moreover precisely in the same 
place where the General had laid it down after looking 
at it ; apparently he had not moved it or even looked at 
it again. 

“ Luncheon is served, sir,” said Jones. 

“ I will come,” said the General, rising. “ Let this 
letter be sent to post at once.” 

As soon as his master had been served, the butler 
went out into the hall and summoned one of the young 
footmen, taking the opportunity of reading the address 
on the letter — “ Sir Reginald Dallow, United Service 
Club.” “ Oh ! James, take this to post and look sharp 
about it,” he said, authoritatively, to the underling who 
answered his summons. 

And then he went into the dining-room with his own 
deferential manner in full play, satisfied that Sir 
Reginald Dallow had nothing to do with the young 
lady who was staying at Morley’s Hotel, and who was 
coming again at three o'clock. 

General Yandeleur sat over his lunch for nearly an 
hour, winding up with a tiny glass of Benedictine and a 
cigarette, which he spun out to the furthest limits of 
enjoyment. Then, after glancing over some of the new 


64 


HARVEST. 


weekly papers, lie composed himself for a ten minutes’ 
nap, more than which he had never allowed himself in his 
life. This in time was broken by the entrance of Jones. 

“ The carriage is at the door, sir.” 

General Yandeleur shook himself together. 

“ Very well.” 

“ Shall I tell Parker to wait, sir ? ” 

“ To wait ? No ; I shall be ready in a few minutes.” 

Jones coughed. “ Beg pardon, sir — but the lady who 
called this morning said she would call again about 
three o’clock.” 

General Vandeleur grew woodenly haughty at once. 
“ Very well, I suppose you know what to say ? ” 

“ That you are not at home, sir ? ” said the butler, in 
a surprised tone. 

“ Damnation, sir,” thundered the General, for the 
first time speaking with any expression, “ if I’ve got to 
teach you your business after all these years, you’d 
better go elsewhere and learn it. I suppose when I’m 
not in the house you generally say I’m not at home, 
don’t you ? ” 

“ Certainly, sir,” returned the servant, with quite a 
little volley of coughs, deprecating and otherwise. 

“ Then what else is there to be said to-day ? ’Pon 
my soul, you seem to me to get more stupid and 
ignorant every day you live.” 

There is one blessing which domestic service brings 
with it — that is the power of being able to bear other 
people’s temper with equanimity, and the certainty of 
learning that it is best to take what masters and 
mistresses say in a boiling passion for what it is worth. 
Many persons might have been distinctly offended by 
such plain-spoken remarks, but Jones was wise in his 


HARVEST. 


(35 


day and generation, and did not even permit himself to 
be momentarily raffled. 

“ H’m — it’s very queer,” he said to himself when the 
old General, with his fiercely- waxed white moustache, 
his close-cropped white hair, looking quite an old beau 
in his sable-trimmed coat, had driven away towards the 
circus in his smart mail-phaeton. “ It’s queer, to say 
the least of it.” 

But I must do Jones the justice to say, that unruffled 
as he was by the General’s hard words to himself, he 
did not half like the task of answering the door when 
Rachel Power knocked at it at a few minutes past three 
o’clock. 

u I am sorry to say, ma’am,” he said, with an apolo- 
getic cough, “ that General Vandeleur is not at home.” 

“ But he has been in ? ” she asked. 

“ He has, ma’am.” 

“ And you gave him my card ? ” 

“ I did, ma’am — and your message.” 

“ My message ? ” 

“ That you would call again at three o’clock, ma’am,” 
he exclaimed. 

“ And he said ? ” 

“ General Yandeleur did not say anything, ma’am.” 

“ But he is out ? ” 

“Yes, ma’am, he is; he went out driving about 
twenty minutes ago.” 

“ And you are sure that he left no message for me ? ” 

“Quite sure, ma’am; in fact” — and here Jones became 
afflicted by quite a little volley of coughs, apologetic and 
explanatory — “ in fact, ma’am, I ventured to remind the 
General, as he was going out, that you would return at 
three o’clock ; but he left no message, ma’am.” 

E 


66 


HARVEST. 


For a moment, although she had all along been fully 
prepared for this contingency, Eachel was almost too 
stunned by the repulse to speak. It is not a pleasant 
thing to run your head against a stone wall, and while 
you are still smarting with the pain, remember that you 
ought to have known better, and to have been quite 
sure that you could not help hurting yourself. How- 
ever, she shook off the feeling of pain and soreness by 
an immense effort, and looked back frankly and straight 
into the sympathetic but distinctly inquisitive eyes of 
the old servant. 

u Oh ! thank yon ; it does not matter,” she said, 
quietly. “ I daresay General Vandeleur has gone to my 
hotel or written to me. I thank you — Good day.” 

She turned quickly away, and went towards the 
Langham, feeling as she had never known what it was 
to feel in all her life before. If she could only have got 
away somewhere to hide herself — somewhere where she 
would be able to cool her burning cheeks ! But no ; 
she was in Portland Place in the full glare of a bright 
January afternoon, and she could only walk on with 
knees that trembled under her, with hands that were 
trembling too, and clammy cold within her bear-skin 
muff, with a mist before her eyes, and a strange singing 
noise in her ears — walk on and try to realise that 
she had come from the other side of the world, friendless 
and alone, to seek the protection of her own grand- 
father, and that she had been rejected — aye, worse than 
that, that her rejection had come to her through p 
servant ; and the very servant had pitied her — had felt 
for her in the hour of her humiliation — she had seen it 
plainly in his eyes ! 



CHAPTER YIIL 


REJECTED. 


“ Remember that the reverse of wrong is not always right." — 
Whately. 

“ Come what may, hold fast to love. Though men should rend 
your heart, let them not embitter or harden it.”— R obertson. 


HERE Rachel Power would have gone or what 



? t would have become of her if she had kept on her 
own feet, I do not know, for she was so taken up with 
her own affairs as to be quite incapable of thinking of 
such ordinary and everyday matters as crossing roads 
with safety, or of knowing where she was going. 
Happily, however, a crawling cabman, on the look-out 
for a fare, happened to attract her attention, and this 
somewhat brought her to herself. 

“ I might go for a drive until time to go back/’ she 
thought. “ I must not let Val see how this has hurt 
me ” ; — then aloud she said to the cabman : “ I want 
to go for a drive for an hour or so. Can you take me?” 

“ Yes, lady,” he answered. 

“What will you charge ?” 

“ I’ll leave it to you, lady,” he answered. 

u But I don’t know what the charge ought to be,* 
she cried, with the utmost perplexity. 

“ Well, lady, where do you wan** to go ?” he asked. 


*2 


68 


HARVEST. 


u Anywhere — I don’t mind. Down some of the 
best streets or — or — I don’t care where, as long as you 
take me back to Morley's Hotel, in Trafalgar Square, 
by half-past four.” 

“Very good, lady ; its ’alf-past three now. If I 
drive you along Oxford Street, and through the Park, 
and along Piccadilly to Morley’s — charge? — Well,” 
looking at her doubtfully, “ four-and-sixpence.” 

“ That will do,” said Rachel, and got into the cab. 

She tried her best to enjoy herself — it was all so new, 
so strange. She had talked so often with her father 
about the mother-country, which she had never seen — 
of going “ home,” — and here she was in the very street 
which he had described to her so often — yet alone. 

Yet though she could not take much interest in the 
gay shops and the busy crowds of men and women 
sauntering or hurrying along, still she did not find her 
thoughts go back into exactly the same groove that they 
were in as she walked, like a woman in a dream, down 
Portland Place. 

She was vexed, of course, and hurt — more than hurt, 
she was cut to the heart ; but after all, her grandfather 
was not essential to her existence. Probably without her 
father’s last wishes to guide her, she would never have 
given him a thought, or have put herself to the trouble 
of going near him. It was hard, of course, to have 
been snubbed like that, to have had her face openly 
slapped so to speak ; but all the same, the blame of that 
did not rest upon her, but upon him. It was humiliat- 
ing, most humiliating, and hard upon her, for she had 
never known the bitterness of a genuine snub in all 
her life before, yet, after all, though the pain of it had 
entered her soul like iron for a short time, the rudeness 


HARVEST. 


69 


and the ill-breeding of it had no effect on her, rather 
they were a justification in her mind of the story of her 
mother’s past life. 

“ I will put him altogether out of my head,” she said 
to herself. “I won’t even think about him again. After 
all, what loss can a man be to me that I have never 
even seen — and a disagreeable rude old man into the 
bargain, as he must be. No ; I have Val, and while I 
have my Val, I need think twice of no annoyance aij^ 
worry myself about nothing.” 

With this resolve in her mind she set herself to look 
with interest at shops and people, then at the green 
beauty of the park through which they went. But very 
soon her thoughts went back to Valentine Harrington, 
and she fell into a day-dream about him, which lasted 
till, with a start, she found herself turning into Trafalgar 
Square. 

“And it is half-past four,” she said. “ He will be 
here very soon now. I must be quick, and make my- 
self look pretty before he comes.” 

She had plenty of time. Until nearly six o’clock 
there was no sign of him, then he came with a dozen 
apologies for being so late. He had been detained on a 
matter of importance — had not been able to get away ; 
was, in fact, fussed and hurried, and apparently a little 
put out. 

“ The worst of these places is that there is nowhere 
where one can talk in comfort,” he exclaimed, glancing 
at the door with a disgusted air. “ However, tell me, 
my darling, how did you get on this morning ? Did 
you go to see your relations ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Rachel, in a very low voice. “ I went.* 

“ Yes — and — and they 


70 


HARVEST. 


“ They would not even see me,” she said, in a tone of 
great pain. 

“Wouldn’t even see you. Is it possible ? Are you 
sure, little mouse?” 

“ Quite sure. I went twice.” 

“ The old cat,” muttered he, indignantly. 

“ I promised,” she said, with an effort, “ to tell you 
everything to-day. My mother ran away with my 
father, and ” 

“ My dear child, don't distress yourself by telling me,” 
he said, tenderly. “ It is perfectly useless to worry 
yourself, even by remembering that the old cats are in 
existence. I don't want to know anything about them, 
not even their names. I am sure your mother was quite 
right to run away from people who could treat my 
darling in that way.” 

Rachel gave a great sigh of unutterable contentment. 
It was so good to her to hear her lover speak out in this 
brave, bold fashion, and let her think of her grand- 
father with the contempt that he deserved. It was so 
good to feel that whatever might happen she would 
always be safe and well-cared for in the shelter of his 
strong arms. There was such a triumph in the feeling, 
that, after all, her grandfather had not scored by treating 
her with unfeeling rudeness. And oh ! how happy she 
was. 

“I think I ought to tell you why I have said so 
little,” she began, presently — but Yal interrupted her 
laughingly. “My sweetheart,” he said, “you shall tell 
me nothing until I ask you, because this is our first day 
in England together, and I am not going to have you 
vex yourself by discussing unpleasant subjects and 
detestable people. Let. us go out and have a real good 


HARVEST. 


71 


time. Go and put on an evening gown, and something 
warm to wrap round you, and to-morrow you must 
remind me to buy you that coat, and a warm wrap for 
evenings, and I will rush off and get dressed too ; and 
then I will take you to dine somewhere, and we will do 
a theatre afterwards. Then to-morrow we can have a 
great and serious discussion as to what will be the best 
for you to do until — Oh ! d — m,” he broke off in a 
sharp whisper as the handle of the door was turned. 

Rachel could not help laughing outright. 

“I will go and dress at once,” she said, rising at 
once ; “ how long have I ? Half-an-hour ? ” 

“ Yes ; rather more than less,” he answered. “ I 
shall not lose a moment.” 

He opened the door for her, and she went out of the 
room, and as she went she passed in front of two men 
who were on the point of coming in. They turned and 
watched her go up the stairs, then looked round at the 
man who had opened the door. 

“ Why, Harrington, old chap, how are you ? ” ex- 
claimed one of them. “ Is it really you ? When did 
you come back ? ” 

“ Ah ! Parkes, how are you ? ” returned Harrington, 
who was furious at the encounter. “ I got back yester- 
day, or rather early this morning.” 

“And paying calls already, eh! you sly dog,” said 
Parkes, with a familiar dig in the ribs. “ Who is the 
lady, eh ? ” 

“ Not anyone you know,” returned Yal, curtly. “ I’m 
awfully sorry, but I must be going. I’ve got a dinner 
engagement and must be off to dress.” 

“All right, old fellow. Still at the same address, I 
suppose ?” 


72 


HARVEST. 


u Yes ; but come and look me up at the club — yes, the 
game. Will you breakfast with me to-morrow, both of you ?” 

“ Be delighted. What time ? ” 

“ Ten ; if that’s not too early.” 

“ Not at all — be delighted. Good-bye, old chap.” 

Now I wonder,” said Parkes to the other man, 
when the door had closed behind Harrington. “I 
wonder what the devil that fellow is up to ? ” 

“ What should he be up to ? ” asked the other. 

“ When you know old Val better,” said Parkes, with 
a laugh, “ you’ll always know what that particular 
manner means — a woman.” 

“ Well, of course, there was a woman, and an un- 
commonly pretty one, too,” said De Guise. 

“ Yes ; but I happen to know that manner. Here’s 
a waiter. I say, waiter, who is the tall young lady in 
mourning, who is stopping here ? ” 

“ I don’ know, sare. I will enquire,” replied the 
waiter, civilly. 

He returned in a few minutes. 

“ She is a Miss Power, sare ; she arrive from India 
this morning.” 

“ Oh ! thank you, thank you.” Then as the waiter 
went out, “ Didn’t I tell you so ? Ah ! I know old Yal 
well — no one better.” 

His friend laughed out aloud. “ Well, old chap, 
you certainly said the lady was a woman, and that 
Harrington knew her. All the same though, I don’t 
know that you conveyed much information to me, 
considering that I could see that for myself without 
much difficulty.” 

“ Yes ; but there’s something between ’em,” Parkes 
persisted. 


HARVEST. 


73 


u I shouldn't wonder,” returned the other, “ if they 
came home in the same ship it's not unlikely. 
Harrington would never be such an ass as to lose such 
a chance as that.” 

“ Harrington don't lose much chance when a woman 
is concerned,” Parkes said, gloomily. 

“ And small blame to him,” remarked De Guise, who 
had a fellow-feeling for the hero of the situation. “ I 
only wish there was a ghost of a chance in the same 
quarter for me. By Jove, I'd give old Yal an uneasy 
time of it if there was” 



CHAPTER IX. 


WITH OPEN EYES. 

* A man’s nature ranneth either to herbs or weeds.” — Bacon. 

** There are words which sever hearts more than sharp swords ; 
there are words, the point of which sting the heart through the 
course of a whole life.” — B rewer. 

“ T CANNOT come to you until four o’clock or so, to- 

JL morrow, my dearest,” had been Valentine 
Havrington’s last words when he had taken her back to 
the hotel after the theatre ; and now it was nearly five, 
and still he had not come. 

Rachel, though she was well amused by the novelty 
of watching the tide of humanity as it flowed past the 
window, was beginning to get a little impatient, and to 
wonder what was keeping him so long. 

Like most new-comers to the city of great distances, 
she made no excuse for the difficulties of making time 
and place fit in with one another, and she, not un- 
naturally, thought that however he might inconvenience 
others, her lover ought to keep his promise to her. 

Although she had been alone she had not had a dull 
day, for immediately after breakfast she had gone across 
into the National Gallery, and there she had remained 
until past two o’clock. Then she had lunched, and in 


HARVEST. 


75 


delightful ignorance of any difference between one 
street and another, had taken a walk down the Strand 
for the purpose of looking into the very attractive shop 
windows. 

From this expedition, I am sorry to say Rachel 
Power came back to the safe shelter of the hotel in a 
towering passion. Poor child ! She had not got very 
far down the Strand either, and had not had more than 
a peep at any of the shop-windows, for no sooner did 
she stop to look at a particularly charming display of 
rings in a jeweller’s shop, than a rather florid gentleman 
stopped too, and asked her if he might have the pleasure 
of buying her some of the pretty things she was 
admiring. 

Now Rachel had always heard that the streets of 
London were paved with gold ; but she had never 
expected to have a practical illustration of the saying 
like this. As a matter of fact, when the smooth bold 
voice addressed her, she gave a great start and sprang 
half a yard away from the window. 

“ Sir ! ” she cried. 

“ No ; don’t start like that, my pretty one,” her 
admirer said, soothingly. 

With great dignity Rachel drew herself up to her full 
height. “ Sir,” she said, in freezing accents, * you mis- 
take me.” 

Her statement was so evidently sincere that the 
smooth-voiced gentleman made no attempt to help her 
further to realise the truth of an old saying ; on the 
contrary, he took off his hat and begged her pardon ; 
and Rachel, with a stiff bow, walked on, feeling per- 
fectly safe, being sure that she could not meet with two 
such men in one street. 


76 


HARVEST. 


Poor child ! A pretty girl does not walk very far 
down the Strand on a winter’s afternoon without a good 
deal of attention of that kind ; and the result of Bachel’s 
rash pilgrimage was that she had at last to jump into a 
cab, as the best and easiest way of getting out of her 
difficulties. 

And what a passion she was in ! Positively she had 
trembled like a leaf when she got back to the hotel, so 
that she could scarcely manage to get up the steps to 
the door. Nay, she was even trembling a little still, 
neaily two hours afterwards. 

But oh ! these dreadful London streets. They were 
amusing enough to watch through a window or from the 
safe shelter of a cab ; but for a woman alone, and on foot, 
they seemed to be impossible ; and yet her common- 
sense told her that there must be hundreds and 
hundreds of women in this great city who did not 
possess carriages and could not afford cabs, who had 
husbands all day long absorbed by the cares of business, 
or who did not possess husbands at all. Surely these 
women must go out daily, and alone ! Why, yes, she 
herself had seen a great many women of all ages and 
classes go past that very window, and yet they seemed 
to be allowed to go along quietly and without molesta- 
tion — without the hideous kind of attention which had 
been so freely lavished upon her. She wondered if there 
could be anything wrong about her appearance ; and, 
jumping up, went to the glass at the side of the room to 
look at herself. No ; there was nothing very extra- 
ordinary about her ; and her plain black gown was 
plainness and simplicity itself. 

She took up her little black bonnet, and turned it 
round doubtfully. True, it might not be the very latest 


HARVEST. 


77 


fashion ; bnt it was a very small and unassuming affair, 
certainly not calculated to attract attention. Could it 
be the fur cape she had got ? No ; she had seen dozens 
of them already —and, oh ! here he was. 

“ Oh ! how late you are,” she cried, gaily — she was 
so glad to see him. 

“ I am rather late, my sweetheart,” he said, very 
tenderly. “ Are you very angry with me ? ” 

“Angry ? Why, no. But I w&s getting very impatient, 
that was all ; and oh ! Yal, such a dreadful thing has 
happened to me, you can’t think”; ^nd forthwith she 
related to him all the dreadful experience of the after- 
noon. 

Valentine Harrington only laughed. “ You will get 
used to all that, my dearest,” he said, indulgently. 
“ You are young and too stylish-looking to be seen out 
alone on foot, particularly in the Strand. Of course 
there are plenty of pretty and stylish-looking women 
who have to go in the Strand, but they all know their 
way about and look it. You are so unmistakeably a 
stranger that you must be careful how you go about by 
yourself. You see, you are very pretty and very smart- 
looking too.” 

“ Smart,” repeated Rachel, in something like dismay; 
then glanced down her sable attire, and looked up at 
him in genuine perplexity. “ Smart ? I ? In these 
black things ? ” 

“ Oh ! I don’t mean gaudy,” he explained — he had 
picked up the last new society phrase already ; she 
could not think what he meant — “but smart in the 
sense of looking fashionable and ladylike and all that. 
Well, my darling, I must humbly beg your pardon fo> 
being so late ; but the fact is, I was kept from coming 


78 


HARVEST. 


by important business ; and, by tbe bye, we can't really 
talk here. I wonder if they can give us a private 
sitting-room? At all events, I will ring and find 
out.” 

He rang the bell as he spoke, and when a waiter 
came to answer the summons, told him that he had 
some important business matters to talk over with this 
lady, and would be glad if they could let them have a 
room in which they would be undisturbed for an hour 
or so. 

The waiter replied that he would enquire, and after a 
few minutes returned with the information that the 
proprietor’s own sitting-room was at their disposal, if 
they would follow him. 

“You would like some tea, Rachel ? ” he asked her, 
as they crossed the entrance. 

“ I should, very much,” she replied. 

Eventually, when the tea had come and the door was 
closed, he left his position on the hearth and knelt 
down beside her chair. 

“ I’ve had such a tiring day, Rachel,” he said, wearily, 
and leant his head upon her shoulders. 

“ Have you, dear ? Let me give you a cup of tea,” 
she answered. “ I know it’s a woman’s remedy, and 
that men despise it — but try it, and see if it does not do 
you good.” 

“ I shall despise nothing that you give me,” he said, 
tenderly. 

She put her arm round him as she would have done 
round a weary child, and held his head upon her breast, 
while she made the tea. 

“ Now get up and sit in that chair,” she said, with a 
gesture towards an easy chair which stood beside the 


HARVEST. 79 

table. “ Yes ! Now drink this, and see if it don’t cure 
you.” 

Valentine Harrington drank the tea, and suffered 
himself to be made much of, and then put the cup 
down declaring that he was already nearly himself 
again. 

“ I’m a fool to come and bore you like this, dearest,” 
he said humbly ; “ but the truth is, I’ve had a trying 
day and am likely to have a trying evening. I’m afraid, 
dear, I shall have to leave you alone to-night.” 

“Will you? Never mind! It will be dull,” she 
admitted, “ but if you cannot help it, why you cannot. 
You see I am paying myself the compliment of imagin- 
ing that you would spend it with me if you could.” 

“ If I could — Ah ! my darling, I would never leave 
you again for a single moment, if I could follow my 
own inclination,” he declared. “ Oh ! if we could only 
follow our own inclination, instead of having to sacrifice 
everything to the wishes of other people.” 

“ Something has happened to put you out,” she said; 
“ Tell me about it?” 

For a moment he did not speak. 

“ Tell me ?” she said, persuasively. “ If it is something 
disagreeable I ought to know it and share it.” 

Valentine gave a great sigh. “ Well, dearest,” he 
began reluctantly, “you know that I — that you told me 
yesterday about the way in which your relations had 
treated you, that they wouldn’t even see you.” 

“Yes.” 

“ An d I left you last night, feeling that there was 
only one thing for me to do, and yet I could not speak 
to you first about it.” 

“Why not?” 


80 


HARVEST. 


“ You know, Rachel, I have never talked business to 
you.” 

“ I know.” 

“We were so happy on board the Saracen, and I 
felt so sure of the future, so happy, so peaceful, that I 
never thought I ought perhaps to have told you just all 
mv circumstances.” 

“ But you told me that you were poor — that you 
hadn’t two sixpences to rub together,” she cried. 

“Yes; I know that I told you that — I’ve got to tell 
you the rest now,” he said, gloomily. “ Well, in brief 
it is this, darling ; my father and mother both died 
when I was quite a little chap, leaving me without a 
penny in the world, and if it hadn’t been for my god- 
father I should have gone to the workhouse or to the 
devil. As it was ” 

“ Yes ? ” as he paused — “ yes ; go on.” 

“ My godfather, upon whom I really hadn’t the 
shadow of a claim except that he was my godfather 
and had been unusually attached to my parents, and 
was moreover a rich old fellow without a relation in 
the world, took me up, took me home with him after 
my mother died — she only lived three months after my 
father, poor soul — got nie a nurse, then a governess — sent 
me to Eton, then to Sandhurst — then into the Service — 
and has allowed me a thousand a year ever since, and 
calls me his heir.” 

“ How good of him,” Rachel cried. 

u Yes ; he's a good old chap and, by Jove, he’s been 
a good friend to me. And so you see, my darling, 
although last night I felt that there was only one thing 
for me to do with regard to you — which is, marry you at 
once — I felt I couldn’t, in common fairness to him, say 


HARVEST. 


81 


anything definite about it until I had sounded him on 
the subject.” 

“ No, exactly. He has the first claim on you,” she 

exclaimed. 

“ Of course I didn’t mean to ask him for more money, 
though, of course I shouldn’t have refused it if he’d 
offered to increase my allowance ; I thought we might 
get very well on it, even in a cavalry regiment like the 
White Horse. And this morning I went down to 
breakfast with the old chap, intending to talk it over, 
and see what he said about it.” 

“ And what did he say ? or didn’t you see him ? ” 

“ See him — yes, by Jove, that I did and heard him 
too,” returned Val ruefully ; “ I wish I had heard a 
little less of him.” 

“ But why ? ” said Rachel, beginning to guess at the 
truth. “ Did he refuse you, Val ? ” 

The piteous little trembling voice was almost too 
much for him. 

“ Refused me ; yes, my darling. He won’t hear of 
my marrying anybody at any price.” 

“ Then it has nothing to do with me ? 99 

“With you — no, except that he won’t hear of my 
marrying you. Why, he wouldn’t even hear your 
name, or who you belonged to, or anything about you. 
‘ Some scheming adventuress you’ve picked up out 
there,’ he roared. ‘ No, sir, I won’t give my consent to 
any such tomfoolery, certainly not. Let me hear no 
more about it, not another word, or upon my soul, sir, 
I’ll wash my hands of you entirely.’ And so,” Valen- 
tine Harrington ended ruefully, “ he is perfectly 
capable of doing.” 

think he will not relent ? u 

V 


82 


3AJRVEST. 


“ I am certain of it — his word with him is law ; abso- 
lute, unchangeable, unbreakable law ! So, darling, yea 
see the fix I am in. I want to marry you — oh ! ” 
putting his arm round her and, holding her close to 
him, “ how I do want to marry you ; but — but ” 

“But your godfather won’t have it,” she ended. “Oh! 
Val, Yal, there must be some strange ill-luck about me — - 
nobody seems to want me — my people won’t have me at 
any price, and neither will yours.” 

“ But I want you,” he murmured fondly. 

u You want me, yes ! ” she said drearily. “ But you 
have got to do without me — you have got to do with- 
out me.” 

For a moment there was a dead silence ; then Val 
nerved himself by an effort to speak. 

“ You do love me, Rachel ? ” he said. 

“ Oh ! Val,” she cried reproachfully. 

“ Yes, I know it. I only wanted to hear again from 
your own lips. Rachel, darling, is it so certain that I 
must do without you ? ” 

“ How — what do you mean ?” 

“ Mean — Rachel dear, can we not seem to give way 
to my godfather’s will ? It is not like anything else ; 
it is a matter purely personal to ourselves ; it concerns 
no one but ourselves, and we do love each other so 
dearly. It is not right that we should be forced apart 
in this way.” 

“ I don’t quite understand you, Val.” 

“ Oh ! Rachel, it’s so simple, after all. Don’t you 
see that although my godfather won’t give his consent, 
there is no real reason why we should part from one 
another?” 

“ You mean a private marriage ? ” 


HARVEST. 


83 


<c I mean Rachel, dearest love, listen to me. If I 

marry at all, I shall be disinherited. The old man is so 
determined I shall not marry in his life-time that he 
has gone this afternoon to his lawyers to have a new 
codicil put to his will to the effect that if I am married 
at the time of his death I shall lose every farthing. 
It is not fair, it is not just. He has brought me up 
with expensive habits and put me into a profession by 
which I cannot make enough to live on ; and then, j ust to 
suit his own will and caprice, he raises this objection to 
my marrying anybody — not merely you, but anybody . 
It is not j ust — but what can I do ? I am helpless. 
He says he has brought me up as his own son and 
that he has a right to expect I shall do as he wishes; 
and his wish is that I shall not marry during his life- 
time.” 

“ In a measure he is right,” said Rachel, decidedly 
M There is nothing for us but to wait.” 

“ Rachel,” said Harrington, passionately ; “ he is old, 
but he is not too old to keep us waiting for ten or even 
fifteen years. We cant wait all that time. Do you 
once remember my asking you if you thought you would 
ever make a great sacrifice for me ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ And do you remember your answer ? ” 

“ Yes.” 

“ Well, darling, the time has come — I little thought 
then that it would come in this way — when I do ask you 
to make a sacrifice for me, a great sacrifice.” 

Rachel put his arm away from her and got up from 
her chair, standing up straight and tall in the ruddy 
fire light. “ There must be something very horrible 
about me,” she said, in a low pained thrilling voice ; 

F 2 


B4 


HARVEST. 


f * L go out into the street in broad daylight, and men 
1 have never seen accost me as if I were what the man 
I love asks me to become.” 

Harrington caught her in his arms. “ But you 
do love me, darling ? ” he said, catching at the 
smallest word in his favour which might fall from 
her lips. 

“ Ten minutes ago,” she said, looking straight into 
his eyes with something in hers which he had never 
seen there before, something which awed him and 
seemed to freeze his own tender words upon his lips. 
“ Ten minutes ago I believed that I loved you with all 
my heart and soul. Now I know that I do not love you 
as much as I thought.” 

“ What ? You don’t love me ? ” he said. 

“Not well enough to become your mistress,” she 
answered, steadily ; “ not well enough for that.” 

“ But, Rachel — my darling, my love,” he exclaimed. 

“ It is no use to talk about it,” she said, with calm 
decision. “ I shall think no differently if we talk for ten 
hours or ten years about it. You may be right in ask- 
ing me to make this sacrifice for you — I dor.’t know ; I 
don’t try to judge you. I only know that 1 am not the 
sort of woman who makes a sacrifice of that kind. 
If I did make it, I should not be happy for a week 
— a week,'’ she repeated bitterly; “not for an 
hour.” 

“ And you are going to give me up like this ? ” he 
said reproachfully. “ You can coolly renounce me and 
give me up as easily as this ? ” 

“I have not renounced you. I have only told you,” 
she answered, <c that I will not do what you ask of me. 
As to living without you easily — why, I have not yet 


HARVEST, 


85 


tried what life without you is like,” and then she held 
out her slender hand to him — u Good-bye.” 

“ Good-bye,” he echoed. “ Why, Rachel, have you 
nothing else to say to me ? ” 

“ There is nothing more to be said,” she answered 
in a very low voice. 



CHAPTER X. 

ALONE IN THE WORLD. 

“ The word that once escapes the tongue cannot be recalled ; th« 
arrow cannot be detained which has once sped from the bow.” — 

Italian. 

44 Honest labour bears a lovely face.” — De filer. 

“TN any case you will do nothing without telling me?” 

_L were Harrington's last imploring words to Rachel 
ere he left her. “ I will come again first thing in the 
morning; and remember, my darling — for although I 
have vexed you and hurt you, you are my darling still, 
nothing can ever alter that — remember, my darling, 
that whether you reject me altogether or decide to wait, 
I shall never give you up — never ! Whenever you want 
anything doing I shall always be there to do it, and — 
and — oh! Rachel, my love — my dearest,” he broke off 
sharply, “ for God’s sake don't look like that.” 

In truth Rachel had turned upon him a face so stony, 
so full of dumb-frozen pain, that a sudden awful dread 
began to knock loudly at his heart ; he caught her in 
his arms with what was almost a cry. “Rachel, 
Rachel,” he cried, “ my darling, don’t say that I have 
lost you ? ” 

She looked at him with her great mournful eyes, soft 
and shy no longer, but darkened with pain. “I do not 


HARVEST. 87 

know,” she said simply. “ But you have hurt me and 
I wish you would go away. I want to be alone.” 

“But I may come back?” he urged. 

“ Yes — you may come back,” she answered. 

With this he had to be content, and as time pressed 
hard, he had no choice but to go. But he did not go 
without kissing her. “I shall come in the morning,” 
he said, then after a moment’s hesitation, asked humbly* 
“Won’t you give me one kiss, Rachel?” 

She was still standing where she had stood for some 
time, suffering his arm to remain around her just as she 
had suffered his caresses in apathy and silence ; but at 
his words she turned and looked at him again, then 
suddenly put her arms round his neck and kissed him 
passionately. 

“ Good-bye,” she said. 

“ Till to-morrow,” he added. 

Rachel Power let her arms fall to her side ; sho said 
nothing at all about to-morrow. 

At last he was really gone and she was free to sit 
down and think it all over; but not there! No. She 
rang the bell, and asked them to send her some tea up 
to her room, for she felt that dinner would be an im~ 
possible feast for her that evening ; and then she went 
upstairs and sat down before the fire, which was a 
luxury she had not been able to deny herself so far, 
indeed, she had not thought it necessary to deny herself 
in that way. 

And then she began to think. Scarcely to think about 
her lover; for as she had said half-an-hour before, there 
was nothing more to be said, neither was there anything 
more to be thought. Thinking would not alter the 
fact that he had asked her to become his mistress. True, 


88 


HARVEST. 


he had glossed over the ugly word, had hinted at it 
rather than actually suggested it, he had cleverly freed 
himself from all blame, and somehow had contrived to 
convey to her that in making this sacrifice for him she 
would have an opportunity of showing the nobility of 
her character and the depth of her affection. 

Well, well, it was no use thinking of all that now. 
She had had a dream, a bright beautiful dream in 
which there was a hero with a heart of pure gold, and 
a future without a cloud to darken it. Poor child ! the 
dream was over and she was awake now, awake to the 
knowledge that it had been no more than a dream 
and that the golden heart of her hero was only dross. 
She was awake, too, to the fact that she was alone in 
London; aye and for that matter, alone in the 
world ! 

I must tell you that Rachel Power was not one of 
those women, those blissfully constituted women, who, 
when in trouble, can sit down and have what is called 
“ a good cry,” and feel all the better for it. No, she 
just sat before the fire and waited for her tea, and 
even her best friend might have watched her without 
finding out that there was much amiss with her. And 
yet, within that quiet exterior, she was on fire, and heart 
and brain were throbbing painfully to the tune of that 
one dreadful word — alone ! alone ! alone ! 

Then a waiter came with the tea and some rolls and 
butter, asking also if the lady would dine there that 
evening. 

“No !” answered Rachel, “I have a headache, I can- 
not eat any dinner. If I feel inclined to have anything 
later I will let you know.' 

“ Very good, madam,” he said, and departed 


HARVEST. 


89 


Then Kachel poured herself out a cup of the tea, 
which was very hot and very strong and very good. 
They had sent her a little jug of cream too, and some 
nice little buns as well as the rolls and butter — quite a 
tempting little meal in fac't — yet Rachel could not enjoy 
it because of that dreadful word still ringing in her ears. 

Then, with an effort, she shook herself together, and 
forced herself to eat a mouthful of bun, and to drink 
the hot and fragrant tea. The bun, however, proved to 
be beyond her powers, with the exception of the single 
mouthful, which she swallowed as if it were poison. But 
the tea she found easy enough, and having drank the 
whole of the cup, began to feel a little Jess forlorn and 
wretched. 

After all she had still her art and nothing could take 
that from her while she kept her senses. 

“ And I shall not lose my senses, bad as I feel about 
it all,” she said wisely, as she stirred her second cup of 
tea. “Yes, I have my art, and I must work and work 
and work, if only to help myself to forget — every-thing.” 

Then she began to calculate how she should best lay 
out her money so as to start work at once under the 
most favourable conditions. She would have to leave 
the hotel to-morrow, of course, for she would not be 
able to afford anything so expensive in the way of 
living. She supposed she would have to have rooms 
somewhere, unless she could find a regular pension for 
art-students, like the house she had lived in in Rome ! 
But where and how was she to find such a house — that 
was the question 1 

Then suddenly the light poured in upon her per- 
plexed brain — Mrs. Damas ! She would go and find 
Mrs. Damas. There was the very woman who would 


90 


HARVEST. 


manage everything for her, who would help her in 
every way. Alone, why what nonsense she had been 
thinking — Alone ! Not while she had a friend like 
Dorothy Damas. 

In less than two minutes she had got her box open 
and was hunting for the book in which she had written 
down Mrs. Damas’s address — here it was, a little red- 
bound book, and here was the page — 

Mrs. Damas , 

12, S. Kensington Square, 

London , S. W. 

“ I will go to her now,” exclaimed Rachel excitedly. 

She was not long in getting ready; in fact, she 
slipped on her hat and coat and put on her furs with- 
out so much as looking once in the glass. Then she 
locked her box and looked at her watch — a quarter to 
eight. Oh ! if only Dorothy Damas was at home. 

“ Call me a cab, please,” she said to the porter, when 
she reached the hall. 

“ ’Ansom, Miss ?” he asked. 

“ Yes, please.” 

“Where to, Miss?” he asked, when he had helped 
her in. 

Rachel’s first impulse was to give the address. 

“ Stay,” she said, “ tell me how far it is to South 
Kensington ?” 

“What part of South Kensington — the station?” 

She caught eagerly at the suggestion ; certainly it 
would be much better to leave no address behind her, 
and then he would not know where to find her. 

“Yes, the station.” 

“About three miles, Miss.” Then to the man,— 
u South Kensington Station, cabby.” 


HARVEST. 


91 


“As soon as they got well down Piccadilly she gave 
the address to the cabman, and then gave herself up to 
thinking of the future again. She wondered, too, if 
Mrs. Damas would be at home. Dear Dorothy; how 
surprised she would be to see her, and how glad — yes, 
in spite of all the shocks and surprises she had gone 
through of late, she felt perfectly sure that Dorothy 
would be very glad. 

At last the cab turned into a large square of tall and 
handsome houses, and pulled up sharp at the door of 
No. 12. 

Rachel got out and handed up the fare to the cabman, 
— one liberal enough to make him touch his hat and 
thank her civilly. Then she went up the steps and 
rang vigorously. 

“ Is Mrs. Damas at home ?” she asked of the maid 
who opened the door. 

The servant hesitated. “ Well, ma'am, she is dressing 
to go to a party,” she answered ; “ I am afraid she won’t 
be able to see you.” 

“ Perhaps not, but you can ask her,” said Rachel. 
il Give her this,” handing a card, “ and beg her to 
see me, if possible ; my business is most important.” 

“ Certainly ; will you walk into this room, ma’am ? ” 

So Rachel walked into one of the cosiest and prettiest 
sitting-rooms that she had ever seen; all white and 
yellow, with a faint tinge of blue about the walls and a 
great deal of blue and white china set out on the various 
cabinets and tables. And in less than two minutes 
there was a rush of feet upon the stairs, and a tall 
woman in a loose white tea-gown, came running in, 
and, with an exclamation of surprise and joy, clasped 
Rachel in her arms and kissed her again and again. 


92 


HARVEST. 


“ My dear, my dear, how glad I am to see yon ! ” she 
cried impulsively. “ What lucky wind has blown you 
this way ? Nay, take off your things at once, and let 
me look at you. Why, Rachel, my dear, you are in 
mourning ; I hope it is not ” 

“ It is for my father,” answered Rachel simply. “ I 
am quite alone in the world now.” 

Mrs. Damas was busy unfastening the hooks which 
secured the bear-skin cape — but she broke off short, and 
threw her arms about the girl very kindly. 

“ My poor child, I am so grieved for you,” she 
murmured ; “ and you have come home to ” 

“ To work,” said Rachel promptly. 

“ And where are you staying ? When did you 
come ?” 

“ I came the day before yesterday, and I am staying 
at Morley’s,” Rachel answered. “ But you are going 
out, Dorothy.” 

“Don’t think of that — there is plenty of time. 
Eleven o’clock will be early enough. Now, sit down 
here and tell me everything.” 

Thus encouraged, Rachei sat down and gave Mrs. 
Damas the outline of her story, and related the cir- 
cumstances in which she was left as regarded money, and 
under which she had come home. She exaggerated 
nothing and concealed nothing, except the name of 
the man whom she loved. 

“I will tell you that too, if you particularly wish 
it,” she said, looking at her bright energetic success- 
ful friend with all her mournful soul in her wistful 
eyes. 

“ No, dearie, no ; don’t tell me that — it is not 
necessary. I understand it all without that.” 


HARVEST. 


93 


w I am sure that he loved me,” Rachel ventured to 
say, stung into a defence of Val by some inflexion in 
Mrs. Damas’s voice. “ He would never have sug- 
gested ” 

“If you’d been an heiress?” ended the artist snrewdly. 
“ No, no, dear, they never do. They’re all alike, these 
men ; there’s not a pin to choose amongst them. So 
long as it’s all smooth sailing and the wheels are well 
oiled, their devotion is undying, a thing to dream of ; 
but when it comes to a hard-and-fast choice between 
the girl they love and the money they want — why, the 
girl goes to the wall. They’re all alike my dear, and 
by the time you’re as old as I am you’ll have got used 
to it. But meantime going to the wall isn’t exactly a 
pleasant process — is it ?” 

“ I suppose that’s about it,” Rachel admitted some- 
what ruefully, for up to now she had not looked at the 
matter quite in that light. “ However, that is easily 
settled — I have done with him now ; there will never be 
anything between us again.” 

“ Are you sure ?” significantly. 

“ I hope I set a better value on myself than that, 
Dorothy,” said Rachel, with a flush and a certain air of 
dignity which made her friend’s heart warm more and 
more to her. 

“ You’ll do, my dear !” she cried. “ Well, go on.” 

“ I want to work — to give my whole life to painting ; 
to make not only a living, but a name. And I want 
you to advise me how best to set about doing it ! Will 
you do this for me, Dorothy ?” 

“ My dear girl,” cried Mrs. Damas, “ I’ll do a good 
deal more than that for you. We were friends in the 
old days in Rome, when I was only just beginning to 


94 


HARVEST. 


know what success really meant. I liked you then — 
though you were a dozen years younger than I — and I 
like you just the same now. I will help you all I can, 
all I know. But first tell me, Rachel, what ideas you 
hfve formed yourself.” 

“ I thought,” said Rachel, “ that I had better get a 
couple of rooms, though I haven’t the faintest idea where, 
or how much to pay for them, or anything. And then I 
thought that I'd better get a studio, or share one, or 
something. I thought you would be able to put me up 
to all that. 

“ And then ” 

“ Then I am going to work” she said, resolutely. 
“ I am going to make a name if I can, and ” 

“ And let them all see,” ended Dorothy Damas, drily. 
“ You couldn’t have a better spur to your ambition, my 
dear — I know it myself from my own experience. I 
daresay if we were all very rich and very happy and all 
the rest of it, heaven-born genius, if we have it in us, 
would be bound to come out and show itself — but I 
rather doubt it. No, for making a name in the present 
state of society, give me, in preference to heaven-born 
genius, a steady respectable talent and an ambition to 
impress one’s various relations, and let them know that 
there is good deal more in us than they ever gave us 
credit for. At all events, you see what the combination 
has done for me.” 

“ I don’t dare to think I shall ever equal you,” said 
Rachel, modestly. 

“ I think it is more than likely that you will outstrip 
me and leave me far behind,” Mrs. Damas said, laying 
a kind strong hand upon Rachel’s. “ At all events, if 
I can help you to do it, I will.” 


HARVEST. 


95 


“ How good you are,” said the girl gratefully, then 
nesitated a moment, looked at the older woman wistfully, 
and suddenly bent down and kissed the strong firm 
hand still lying on her own. u And you will tell me 
just what to do, and what hotel I had better go to for 
to-night ? I want to get away from Morley’s, because 
he will come back in the morning, and I don’t mean to 
see him any more.” 

“ That’s right ; it’s best to be brave and get the 
wrench over at once, my dear,” put in Mrs. Damas 
approvingly. 

“ I have money to go on with,” Rachel began, but 
Mrs. Damas interrupted her. 

“ Stay, dear ; before you tell me anything more of 
your circumstances, let me say what is in my mind. 
Come to me! I am a successful woman, with a h use 
three times as big as I really need, only I am bound in 
a measure to keep up a certain appearance. I am as 
utterly alone in the world as you are — so come to me ; 
be my friend, my companion, and share my studio ; or 
if you find you don’t work so well with me there, I will 
give you a room with a north light, at the top of the 
house. If you have enough money to do it, you can 
pay me a fixed sum for everything. If you have not, 
you can let it run on, and pay me when you have made 
a name.” 

u And if I never make a name ?” Rachel suggested. 

“I shall be no worse off than I was before. The house 
is here, the furniture is here, the studio is here, and 
a second one will cost but a trifle to fit up, if you need 
it.” 

" But I am not actually destitute ; I have nearly a 
thousand pounds,” Rachel explained. 


96 


HARVEST 


<c Then keep it, my dear— keep it. Never break into 
your capital ; it is a golden rule. Nearly a thousand 
pounds — h’m ! Five-and-thirty pounds a year — perhaps 
a little more — not really enough for your dress and 
painting materials. Better say, when you are mak- 
ing money you will pay me a hundred a year; and 
till you make it, let it go on. Now, what do you 
say ?” 

“ Say ! Why, what can I say except that I can’t 
find words to thank you, Dorothy ?” Rachel cried. 
“ What will I do ? Why, I will come and — and work. 
Oh ! you shall see how I will work.” 

“ I have seen you work,” said Mrs. Damas quietly ; 
“ else, fond as I am of you, do you think a busy woman 
like me would be bothered with you? I can tell you, I 
wouldn’t.” 

“And now I will go,” exclaimed Rachel rising, “or 
you will lose your party altogether ; only tell me what 
hotel I had better go to.” 

“To none. Franpine shall go back with you — you 
re ember Franpine ? she is with me still — and help 
you to bring your things back at once — no, not a word, 
my dear; I insist upon it. No, the servants won’t 
mind the trouble at all; they are devoted to me, 
and will do anything for me. And now, dearie, I 
will go along to my party, and come back as early 
as I can.” 

She kissed her kindly as the door opened and Fran- 
pine appeared in answer to her summons. To her Mrs. 
Damas gave some rapid instructions about fetching 
Miss Power’s things, and having something to eat ready 
by the time they returned. 

“And tell the others, Franpine,” she ended, “ that 


HARVEST. 


97 


Miss Power is an old, old friend of mine, and is going 
to stay with me for the next few months — probably 
altogether ; and that I hope they will do everything 
they can to make her happy and comfortable.’' 

And that was the end of Rachel Power’s first day 
alone in the world* 




CHAPTER XI 


A FRESH START. 


“Work constantly and diligently at something or other; for 
idleness is the devil’s snare for small and great.” — 


“Life of Perthes.” 


“ There is no road too long for the man wto advances without 
undue haste ; there are no honours too distant to the man who pre- 
pares himself for them with patience.” — L a Bbuyere. 


ITH Mrs. Damas’s maid Franpine as her oody- 



T T guard, Rachel Power went back to the hotel in 
which she had suffered the most cruel blow that had 
ever fallen upon her. A few minutes was enough for 
her to put her things together and pay for what she 
owed ; and then she saw her boxes carried out, and felt 
at last that she was fairly safe from pursuit — for she had 
but little doubt that Valentine Harrington would pursue 
her, or at least try to do so. 

“ Where to ? ” asked the porter as he shut the door. 

“ Home,” answered the maid sharply ; she had had 
her instructions from her mistress, and had her answer 
ready. 

Rachel sank back with a sigh of relief. At last the 
dearest link which bound her to the old life was com~ 
pletely broken; and for the future her life would be 
among Bohemians, with whom such men as had been 
her ideals before find but little favour. 


HARVEST. 


99 


Poor Rachel’s heart was torn in different ways. She 
had seen a good deal of Bohemian life in Rome, and she 
did not know that it is about as different to Bohemian 
life in London as chalk is to cheese. She did not 
know, in fact, that in London there are two distinct 
sets which may be called Bohemian — the Bohemians 
who habitually eat without a table-cloth, and the Bohe- 
mians who are merely a little unconventional — which 
are, in truth, just about as different to one another as 
the real army-man — quiet, modest, well-dressed — is to 
the army man of the modern dramatist, who thinks no 
more of calling his brother-officer a cad before his man- 
servant than he does of eating salt with his egg at 
breakfast. 

Now, during all her life Rachel had been brought up 
to think spruceness and smartness the great aim and 
object of a man’s appearance, and during the long jolt- 
ing drive — for from Charing Cross to South Kensington 
is a long way, let me tell you, in a four-wheeler — she 
was trying to look forward and think what her future 
life would be like ; trying to realise that for her the 
smooth well-cropped head and neat feet were memories 
of a happy past, and that the men with whom she 
would associate in the days to come would all be untidy 
and artistic-looking, with long hair and wide collars, 
with shapeless soft hats and trousers that had got queer 
about the knees. She wondered, with a pang of dismay, 
if she were to be walking in the street one day, and ono 
or two of these gentlemen happened to meet her and 
walk back with her as they had often done in Rome, 
what should she do if they chanced to meet with Valen- 
tine Harrington ? They might be true as steel and 
clever as — as — daylight (she could not think of a better 


tore. 


a 2 


100 


HARVEST. 


simile), and he might be — nay, he was — as false as he 
was high, and yet in her heart Rachel Power knew 
that she would rather far be jilted by Valentine Har- 
rington than settle down contentedly to a life’s devotion 
from a man with a shock head, a wild eye, and an 
absolute disregard for his clothes and his tablecloth 
alike. I do not seek to defend her, nor to hold her up 
as a pattern heroine — poor child, she did neither herself 
—I only say that this was the frame of mind in which 
she went to take up her new life at No. 12, South 
Kensington Square. Poor child ! it was a frame of mind 
which did not, happily for her, last very long. Very 
soon she found that the young men who had been the 
shaggiest and the untidiest of all those whom she had 
known in Rome were among the sprucest and smartest 
of Mrs. Damas’s acquaintance ; the young men who had 
worn the softest and most shapeless hats in Rome wore 
the shiniest and most approved shape of tall hats in 
London ; those who had been the wildest of eye and the 
most Bohemian in manner there, seemed "to her to be 
the most quiet and conventional here. Well, it was 
good to her that it was so. 

She soon found too that Mrs. Hamas did not cultivate 
Bohemian society only. Society people found their way 
to her large and lovely studio, and drank fragrant tea 
out of valuable little crown Derby cups, and looked at 
her pictures and listened to the music, if there happened 
to be any, and wondered if that odd-lookirig man was a 
celebrity, or if such-and-such a woman was anyone out 
of the common. Generally it proved that the odd- 
looking men were nobody in the least interesting, and 
that the strangely-dressed women were the merest out- 
siders of the great Bohemian world — generally they 


HARVEST. 


101 


found that the celebrities were no more odd-looking 
than Mrs. Damas herself who, clad in a well-cut and 
well-fitting tailor-gown, moved to and fro among her 
guests — a brilliant vivacious woman stamped with the 
rare impress of personal power. 

But this was only one side of Rachel Power’s new 
life. The chief end and aim of her existence at this 
time was work, only hard work. And work she did, 
day and night. 

“ I shall only stop,” she said to Mrs. Damas on the 
first day of their new arrangement, “ on one condition ; 
that is that you never consider me in the least, any more 
than you would consider a chair or a table.” 

“ But, my dear ” Mrs. Damas began, not 

altogether understanding. 

“ I mean in this way,” said Rachel, laying her hand 
affectionately upon her friend’s, “ I am in deep mourn- 
ing ; I have had a cruel loss and a cruel disappoint- 
ment within the last three months— three months,” 
with a sob, “ why my darling was alive and well three 
months ago — and I don’t want to go anywhere. I only 
want to keep out of everyone’s way and work like a 
slave, work like — like — well, like a desperate woman 
who wants to forget that she ever lived before ; and I 
want you to promise to go everywhere just the same, 
and to promise me that you will never feel even sorry 
to leave me behind.” 

“ But, my dear ” cried Mrs. Damas again. 

“ Yes. I know,” Rachel answered, “ it will be much 
better for me to forget, and I shall forget everything far 
sooner in society than I shall do out of it. Yes, I 
know — but I want to get a picture in the Academy, and 
to make something of a name before I go anywhere. Don’t 


102 


HARVEST. 


yon understand that I don’t want to meet my grand- 
father or — or — him before I have done something to show 
that I was too good to throw over as they threw me over.” 

“ My dear,” said the artist kindly, “ you shall do 
exactly as yon like ; only, don’t think you can even be 
seen here without being known. Not a bit of it — the 
first journalist who comes in will say, ‘Who is the 
lady who is using your studio ? Oh ! Miss Power. 
Clever — very ! H’m ! ’ and then they will go away and 
make a nice little paragraph about the rising young 
painter who is working for fame under our dear Mrs. 
Damas’s wing. Then the next one will want to improve 
upon that ; he will hear me call you Rachel — and the 
next day Miss Rachel Power’s new picture will be 
discussed in all its lights, or her gown, or her face, or 
something. So, my dear, don’t think that in hiding 
yourself here, you will hide yourself from either your 
grandfather or your- — your old lover. That would be a 
very ostrich-like proceeding, I assure you.” 

“What am I to do then?” exclaimed Rachel in a 
scared tone. 

“ If you are really anxious to keep your whereabouts 
from their knowledge I should certainly advise you to 
take another name. No, don’t look so shocked; many 
painters and writers and actors do it. It is often a 
mere convenience — anyway, nobody looks upon it as a 
dishonesty. Sometimes we know their real names, 
more often we neither know nor seek to know them. 
For, after all, what does it matter ? It’s not the name 
but the person that makes the difference.” 

“And you would seriously advise me to do that?” 
Rachel asked. 

“ 1 seriously would/’ Mrs. Damas replied. 


HARVEST. 


103 


<c What name would you take ? ” 

“ A pretty-sounding one; that is a far more important 
matter than you might believe at first.” 

“ If you think it best for me, I will do it ; but it will 
be difficult to choose one — for me, at least, unless you 
can help me,” Rachel answered. 

“ Oh, no ; it is an easy matter,” cried Mrs. Darnas 
gaily. “ Now, let me see — Rachel Power. We want 
something quite different to that. Mona McRay ! Fairly 
good — scarcely euphonious enough. Mona Dalrymple 
— too long, eh ? Stay, I have it— Ray Dudley ! That’s 
the very thing — and it will be as easy for me to call 
you Ray as Rachel.” 

So Rachel Power became a name of the past, and the 
young painter, who had taken shelter under Mrs. 
Damas’s brilliant wing, was introduced to such of the 
world as came to No. 12, South Kensington Square, as 
Miss Ray Dudley ; and on the whole very kindly did 
the world take to the new aspirant for its favour and 
approbation. 

It was wonderful, too, how soon and how easily Rachel 
got used to the new state of affairs, and how, after 
the first few days, she answered quite naturally to 
her new name. On the whole, although she kept 
strictly to her original plan of not going out, she had a 
tolerably gay time, for Mrs. Damas’s beautiful studio 
was one of the popular salons where men and women 
loved to gather together. Yet, she did work — worked 
in fact, so well that, by dint of going to bed every night 
at ten o’clock and getting up every morning at six, she 
was able by the time Show-Sunday came round to get 
her picture ready for sending in to run the gauntlet of 
the august Forty ! 



CHAPTER XII. 


A NARROW ESCAPE. 


* Love ever, love only, love faithfully, love to the last." 

— Muloch. 

" Duty commands us to look neither to the right nor to the left, 
but straight onward.” — Hake. 

was Show-Sunday. Nearly all the previous day 



JL the faithful Fran pine and another of the maids had 
been busy setting the studio in order and making ready 
for the stream of visitors who would come to see the 
pictures prepared for the Academy. 

On Saturday Mrs. Damas had industriously gone the 
round of other studios, and she had gone alone. 

“You had mueh better come, Ray,” she said at the 
last moment, after vainly exhausting all her arguments 
to get Rachel out of her shell. 

“Not this time, dear,” answered Rachel, who was 
copying an illumination from an old Book of Hours. 

“ It will do you good, and it’s not like a society affair,” 
Mrs. Damas urged. 

“ Not this time, dear,” answered Rachel ; so Mrs. 
Damas, with a sigh, went off alone. 

“ I looked in at nine studios,” she said triumphantly, 
when she came back again several hours later, “ and I 


HARVEST. 


105 


don t see anything better than my own, and nothing 
half as original as yours.” 

“ That’s good,” returned Rachel calmly. “When mine 
comes back again we shall have the satisfaction of think- 
ing the Forty are as blind as bats and as stupid as owls.” 

“It wont come back,” said Mrs. Damas a little 
crossly. As a matter of fact, she had set her heart and 
soul upon Rachel’s picture getting accepted, and Rachel’s 
want of belief in its merits made her feel almost angry 
with the girl, as if, poor child, it was possible that for 
her to have a humble opinion of herself and her picture 
would in the least affect the fiat of the powers that be 
at Burlington House. She swept across the big studio 
to the picture and eyed it closely. 

“ It’s a splendid thing,” she said enthusiastically. 
“ You ought to be very proud of it, Ray, and of your- 
self too.” 

Rachel had followed her, and stole her arm about her 
neck. “ Dear Dorothy,” she said, with something very 
like a sob in her voice, “ what have I to be proud of? 
Who but yourself has ever believed in me or cared 
what became of me — since I came to London, at least ? 
I am proud of one thing — that is, of being your friend. 
I am proud of that.” 

“ Silly child,” murmured the painter. 

And now it was Show-Sunday. Rachel and Mrs. 
Damas had put the last touches to the studio, had set 
great clusters of golden daffodils against the dark 
oaken dado, and on the tall carved chimney-shelf, had 
set out the quaint screens and hung up gorgeous 
broideries, until the whole place looked like some 
Eastern palace. 

It was a large and lofty room, with an open-pointed 


106 


HARVEST. 


roof, and Gothic windows filled with stained glass 
looking into the street which led into the square. On 
the other side to them were windows high up in the 
wall, put to catch the full north light, and over both 
these and the quaint Gothic ones on the other side of 
the room, were hung arrangements by which either 
could, by the turn of a handle, be closely curtained 
over. In a decorative sense the room was exquisitely 
got up. There were old oak presses, as dark as the 
dado and as quaintly carved as the tall chimney-shelf, 
set out with huge bowls and tall vases ; and there was 
a great tray of Moorish brass-work filled with old silver 
trifles as costly as they were beautiful. There was a 
suit of armour in one corner and a gorgeous screen of 
peacocks’ feathers in another. Here w T as a round table 
of black Bombay wood richly carved — there a large 
and throne-like chair curiously inlaid with ivory and 
coloured woods. Here .was a quaint old copper coal-pan 
shaped like a toad — there a superb tiger skin, with the 
head stuffed and set with gleaming eyes that looked alive. 

And now all the finishing touches had been put; 
every flower was in place, a great fire blazed in the 
wide grate, and in the midst of all this beauty was the 
picturesque figure of Dorothy Damas herself. 

I use the word picturesque advisedly, because in the 
artistic world there are many women who have charm- 
ing and artistic rooms in which they themselves seem 
the one discordant note. But Dorothy Damas was 
thoroughly in keeping with her beautiful room ; a 
slender woman, dark and pale, with a wonderful power 
in the straight gaze of her eyes, a wonderful strength 
in all her gestures and manner, and a still greater 
strength in the decided tones of her clear voice. 


HARVEST. 


107 


To-day she had the faintest possible flush on her pale 
cheeks, and excitement had given a brighter light to 
the radiant eyes that had made many a man’s heart 
beat hard and fast. 

She was not one of the women who wear tea-gowns, 
who smother themselves in a confused mass of silk and 
lace and seem unable to move freely in consequence. 
No; above all things Mrs. Damas was workmanlike and 
untrammelled in her apparel, and the gown she wore was 
plain and without much trimming, and fitted her like a 
glove — a good glove, that is to say. But if it was plain 
it was very rich, made of a flowered brocade on a gray 
ground which .shimmered and flashed as she moved, 
showing touches of silver and gold as she turned herself 
here or there. 

Beside her in a plain black frock with a soft while 
frilling at throat and wrists, Rachel looked like a 
lily of the field against a rare hot-house bloom, and 
more than once Mrs. Damas expressed her disapproval 
of the contrast. 

“ But, dear, there’s no reason to wear such deep 
mourning now,” she said vexedly ; “ it is nearly six 
months ago, and nobody here knows anything about it. 
For this occasion, at least, I think you might have 
made a difference — a white cloth gown with jet trim- 
mings and ribbons would have been charming; or, at 
least, a silk would have looked lighter than that. It is 
really obstinate of you, Ray.” 

“ No, dear, it is not so at all,” Rachel answered. “I 
haven’t got any money to waste on what other people 
think.” 

“ As if I would not gladly have made you a present 
of a frock,” grumbled Dorothy Damas vexedly. 


108 


HARVEST 


“No, you have made me far too many presents 
already,” said Rachel laughing ; “ and you know, 
Dorothy, nobody will look at me, and I should hate it 
if they did. It will be time enough to be stared at 
when I’m a celebrity — I dare say I shall not mind it 
then.” 

“And how do you think you will ever become a 
celebrity if you sit in a corner and let the whole world 
pass by you?” cried Mrs. Damas, who believed in 
seeing and being seen. 

“ But I hope my picture won’t sit in a corner,” Rachel 
laughed. “ Listen ! There’s some one coming. Don’t 
think any more about me and don’t look cross for you 
don’t look nice when you’re cross,” and then the door 
opened and Fran^ine announced “ Sir Charles Sutton.” 

After this arrivals began to come thick and fast, and 
then to pour in in a stream until the large studio was 
filled to suffocation. 

Amongst them all, there being many strangers who 
did not even know Mrs. Damas by sight, Rachel 
escaped notice fairly well. She heard a good many 
criticisms — all more or less favourable to her— of her 
picture, and one tall young man stopped short in pass- 
ing it exclaiming, — “ By J ove ! that’s a clever thing. 
I’d no idea Mrs Damas went in for army subjects.” 

“ That’s not one of Mrs. Damas’s,” Rachel heard a 
man say in reply. “ It’s done by a friend of hers, who 
is studying with her or sharing her studio or some- 
thing. Someone or other told me her name, but I 
forget. Stay, here it is in the comer — 1 Ray Dudley.’ 
Yes, that was the name. Molyneux told me that she’s 
quite young and very pretty.” 

“ Knows how to paint a soldier anyway,” said the 


HARVEST. 


109 


first man, still eying the picture. u By Jove! if I was a 
rich chap I’d buy that.” 

Many such remarks did Rachel hear, and then, just 
as she was beginning to feel happy and amused and to 
think of venturing out of her comer, something hap- 
pened which almost made her scream with fright, which 
made her heart beat till she could hardly breathe and 
some pulse begin throbbing in her throat till she was 
almost choked ; for across the crowd, from the vantage- 
ground of her height and a thick rug on which she was 
standing, she saw Valentine Harrington walk into the 
room. 

He was not alone, indeed he was in the wake of two 
ladies with long-handled glasses, who did not appar- 
ently know Mrs. Damas well, for they consulted together 
a moment and then the elder of the two, and evidently 
the mother of the younger one, rustled up to Mrs. 
Damas and seemed to explain herself. That she was 
somebody of importance Rachel could tell from Dorothy’s 
manner. Then the daughter was introduced to Mrs. 
Damas, who shook hands with her, and immediately 
Valentine Harrington was presented. He bowed with 
his very own air of deference, but Mrs. Damas did not 
give him her hand — and Rachel was glad of it. 

Then the older of the two ladies addressed Mrs. Damas 
again, and after a moment or so, she saw Dorothy turn 
towards one of her own pictures as if they had been 
speaking of it. 

The younger lady turned too, then looked back with a 
coquettish air at Harrington to see if he was following 
or not ; then they too moved towards the picture, and 
so went a few steps further away from Rachel, who was 
standing now well sheltered by her own large canvas. 


110 


HARVEST. 


She had a good look at him then, for the girl with 
whom he had come had her back turned to her and 
Harrington in talking to her was sideways towards 
Rachel. She had good sight too, and she saw that he 
was not a little altered — that he was haggard and looked 
older. 

“ Is it possible that he really cared ? ” she said to 
herself; and just then the girl, who was rather pretty 
than otherwise, with a pert little nose, a bright 
complexion, and a great mass of reddish hair, turned and 
spoke to him and he burst out laughing. 

Rachel shrank back behind her picture as if she had 
had a blow. No, he had not really cared, or if he had, he 
had got over it, for even as she watched them she saw 
him laugh again and try to take a piece of paper which 
the girl held in her hand ; and then they both laughed 
as if there was a perfect understanding and a great joke 
between them. 

Then all at once Rachel remembered that in staying 
here watching them she was running a great risk, that 
even in such a crowd she could not hope to be overlooked, 
and that as soon as Mrs. Damas had shown the lady her 
own pictures, she was sure to bring her on to see 
Rachel’s and that Valentine and the girl would be 
equally sure to follow in their wake. And if he found 
her there, it would be good-bye to her chance of peace 
for the future. 

The thought was enough to make Rachel watch 
eagerly for the first chance of getting across the crowded 
studio and up to the safe shelter of her own room. Not 
so quickly but that Harrington, turning round at that 
moment, caught a glimpse of her or fancied that he did, 
as she disappeared through the doorway. 


HARVEST. 


Ill 


“ Mrs. Damas,” he said, “ who is the lady who is here 
without her hat ? ” 

“ Without her hat ? ” repeated Mrs. Damas vaguely, 
suddenly brought down from art to every-day-life. 
“ Oh, yes, of course — that was my friend, Miss Dudley, 
the painter of this picture.” 

“Ah, yes, yes. I fancied that I knew her but I 
was wrong,” he said, with admirable composure ; but 
all the same, if Rachel’s heart was beating like a 
frightened bird’s up in her own bedroom, Valentine 
Harrington’s was thumping like a sledge-hammer down 
in the crowded studio. 

“ What do you think of the picture ? ” Mrs. Damas 
asked him just then. “Lady Bardinge tells me that you 
are a soldier, so it ought to interest you.” 

“It is a wonderful picture,” exclaimed Harrington. 
“ And did you say that young lady painted it ? ” 

“ She did.” 

“ The one I just asked you about ?” 

“Yes, she is a great friend of mine and lives with 
me — Miss Dudley.” 

“ It is marvellous,” he repeated. “ I wonder if I 
might ask for the honour of an introduction ? ” 

. “ Oh, to be sure. Now where is she ? I don’t see 
her anywhere,” Mrs. Damas replied. 

“ I saw her go out of the room a moment ago,” Har- 
rington told her. 

“Then she is gone into the drawing-room,” Mrs. 
Damas said cheerfully, only too glad to be able to 
introduce so nice-looking a young man to her friend. 
“ Come with me and we will find her.” 

At this point Lady Bardinge, who was by way of 
being a very very great lady, interrupted them. “I am 


112 


HARVEST. 


afraid, Mr. Harrington, we cannot wait even to see the 
painter of this exceedingly clever picture. We have 
still fifteen studios to get through this afternoon and we 
have spent quite a long time at Mrs. Damas’s.” 

There was a certain acidity in her tone which 
reminded him that he had just enjoyed an elaborate 
luncheon at her house and had been brought round 
these studios by her and her pert-nosed little daughter, 
and that not for him just then was the pleasure of 
running after strange gods or goddesses. 

“ I think, as Lady Bardinge wants to be getting on, I 
must not trouble you to-day,” he said. “ Some other time” 
— and as the two ladies rustled away — “ perhaps you 
will let me come and see you again some time or other?” 

“ I shall be very glad to see you,” said Mrs. Damas 
frankly. “ Good-bye.' 

And presently Rachel, who had been watching from 
her bedroom window which overlooked the street, and 
had seen Harrington follow the two ladies out and get 
into a smart open carriage and drive quickly away, came 
down into the studio again, believing that her absence 
had been unnoticed. Mrs. Damas, however, was 
standing near the door when she came in and looked at 
her sharply. 

“ Is anything the matter, Ray ? ” she asked. 

“ No, dear,” in well-feigned surprise. 

“ Dear child, you look as if you had seen a ghost,” 
Mrs. Damas persisted. 

Rachel drop °ed the mask at once. “ So I have,” she 
whispered ; “ ho has been here,” and passed on. 

“ I half feared as much,” said Mrs. Damas to herself. 
* And he has asked leave to come and see me. Well, 
this is a pretty kettle cf fish.” 


CHAPTER XIII. 


FAME 

“Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away ; for, lo, the winter 
is past, the rain is over and gone ; the flowers appear on the earth ; 
the time of the singing of birds is come ; and the voice of the turtle 
is heard in our land.” — Solomon. 

“ To know a man, observe how he wins his object, rather than 
how he loses it ; for when we fail, our pride supports us ; when we 
win, it betrays us.” — C otton. 

M RS. DAM AS was perfectly right about Rachel’s 
picture — it was not rejected ; and in due time was 
hung, and hung on the line. Accordingly, Mrs. Damas 
was radiantly triumphant. 

“ What did I tell you ?” she exclaimed to Rachel 
when they first heard the news that the picture was 
accepted. “ You knew far more about it than I — of 
course, of course ; that’s the way with young people 
now-a-days — they know everything. In my humble 
opinion they know far too much — far too much.” 

So she chatted on, half scolding the girl to keep her- 
self from crying over Rachel’s success. But all at once 
poor Rachel electrified her by trying to laugh and then 
bursting into floods of passionate tears. In a moment 
Mrs. Damas had flown to her and caught her in her 
arms. 

a 


114 


HARVEST. 


“ No, no, dearie, don’t take it like this ; you’ll get 
used to having pictures in the Academy by-and-bye — 
all in good time. But don’t cry like this, my dear, 
don’t — it hurts me so, you can’t think — it makes me 
feel as if I hadn’t been kind to you.” 

“Not kind to me!” cried Rachel, when she found her- 
self able to speak again, “why, Dorothy, you’ve been an 
angel of goodness to me. What should I have done and 
where should I have been now, if it hadn’t been for you ?” 

Mrs. Damas laughed. “Well, I daresay you would 
have been in some other studio at this precise moment, 
but the picture would have been in the Academy all the 
same.” 

“ I don’t know,” said Rachel sadly ; “ no one but you 
would have been bothered with me — not, at least, in 
such a way as to make me capable of good work. I was 
poor and friendless, utterly alone in the world, and in 
great trouble then. I don’t think that any body but 
you would have troubled themselves about me then.” 

“ Well, my dear,” said Mrs. Damas gaily, “it was a 
good thing that I happened to be about, if that is so. 
And now you may console yourself with the certainty 
of knowing that plenty of people will be only too glad 
to trouble themselves about you now.” 

“ If my picture is lucky enough to get any particular 
notice,” returned Rachel, whose faith in herself was not 
yet really established. 

“ If!” cried Mrs. Damas scornfully. 

Happily for Rachel the picture was marked out at 
once as one of the most important works in the exhibi- 
tion. The papers were all full of praise of the new 
painter, whom rumour reported to be young and pretty. 
Every day crowds stopped to gaze at what was certainly 


HARVEST. 


115 


one of tie most striking pictures in the Academy — such 
crowds that Mrs. Damas was justified: in wondering, 
impatiently, why Rachel did not have the honour of a 
barrier ? Mrs. Damas wanted all the honours for 
Rachel. 

Truly it was a striking work. Against the dark 
background of a slate-grey cliff a British Officer lay 
desperately wounded ; standing over him was a comrade, 
full of fire and brave determination to die hard if he 
must die at all, and attacking him were three Afghans 
as determined as himself to win the day. One of them 
had, however, just received the charge of the Officer’s 
revolver in his lungs and was staggering back, while 
on the ground lay three other Afghans, dead or dying. 
Underneath the picture was written — “A Fight for Life.” 

After this there was no more retirement for Rachel. 
The general surprise was so great that a young and 
beautiful girl should have painted a picture so strong in 
conception, so clever in drawing, so fine in colour, and 
so faithful in detail, that society in general and painters 
in particular were eager to welcome her to their midst. 

Nor was it only invitations that she was besieged 
with. Photographers sent asking her to submit herself 
to them, agents to beg her to let them act for her in all 
manner of ways, dealers that they might sell her pictures 
for her, and more than one inquiry came as to the price 
she was asking for the one then hanging on the walls at 
Burlington House. 

“ Put a good price on it, my child,” said her friend, 
Mrs. Damas. “ Old Simon has made you a pretty good 
bid and offers to let you leave it open till the end of the 
show; but ask nothing under three hundred for a 
private buyer— Heaven knows ! it’s little enough.” 


116 


HARVEST. 


And whilst they were considering what price she 
should ask, Fran pine came in to say that a gentleman 
was asking for Miss Dudley. 

“ Who is it, Fran pine? ” Rachel asked, her thoughts 
flying straightway to Val Harrington 

“An old gentleman, Mademoiselle,” said Franpine, 
“ He says you do not know him. Here is his card — he 
has a carriage and pair at the door.” 

Rachel took up the card. 

“ Somebody after the picture,” said Mrs. Damas in a 
satisfied tone. “ I like them to come — it’s a greater 
compliment than writing. Mind, not a penny under 
three hundred, my child.” 

But Rachel did not answer. She was staring at the 
card with eyes which almost refused to believe what 
they saw, for the name upon it was “ Major-General 
Yandeleur, 200 Portland Place.” 

* Dorothy,” she gasped, “ look at this.” 

Mrs. Damas took the card and read the name, not for 
the moment remembering to whom it belonged. 

“Well,” she said, “what about it? A very man 
to want to buy a picture.” 

“ But it is my grandfather,” Rachel cried. 

Mrs. Damas started. “ Oh, my dear, I never thought 
of that! Very likely he has found you out and re- 
pented himself of his evil. Anyway, you had better 
set him— it does not do to fly in the face of grand- 
fathers who live in Portland Place and drive carriages 
and pairs.” 

“ But ” Rachel began indignantly. 

* “ But you are proud — as proud as he is,” ended Mrs. 
Damas. “I know, I know. He wouldn’t have you 
when you were nobody, and now you don’t want him 


HARVEST. 


117 


when you are somebody. Yes, that’s the world all 
over — but it won’t do for you Rachel, my dear. Be- 
cause he has been an old fool, that is no reason why 
you should be a young one. Two wrongs don’t make a 
right you know ; and if he has regretted treating you 
as he did and has come to make the best of it now, you 
must be generous and make the best of it too.” 

“I won’t,” Rachel began again, when Mrs. Damas 
interrupted her. 

“Remember it was your father’s last wish that you 
should have the advantage of your grandfather’s coun- 
tenance and protection,” she said very gravely. 

Rachel’s heart grew soft instantly. “ You are always 
right, Dorothy,” she said, in a gentler voice. “ I will 
see the gentleman, Franpine. May he come in here, 
Dorothy ?” 

“ Certainly, dear,” Mrs. Damas answered. 

They were then in the studio— -Mrs. Damas was just 
cleaning her palette, having done her work for the day, 
and Rachel was putting the finishing touches to a small 
picture of a Highlander in full dress leaning against a 
stone bastion. As Franpine left the studio Mrs. Damas 
drew a screen in front of her half-finished picture, then 
went on cleaning her palette. “ I’ll go when I have 
done this,” she said to Rachel. 

“ Don’t, leave me on any account,” said Rachel im- 
peratively. 

So when General Vandeleur was shown into the 
room, he moved naturally enough to the older of the 
two ladies, who were evidently both at work. 

“ Miss Dudley,” he began. 

“ I am Mrs. Damas,” said she pleasantly ; “ that is 
Miss Dudley.” 


118 


HARVEST. 


The handsome courtly old General went up to Rachel 
and held out his hand. “My dear young lady,” he 
said, “you are but a young painter — I am an old 
Soldier. May I shake hands with you ?” 

“ Surely,” returned Rachel quietly. She saw that he 
had come as a stranger, without having the smallest 
knowledge of her identity, and she put out her hand 
and laid it in his so calmly, so quietly, so dispassionately, 
that she was astonished at herself. 

“ I must apologise,” said the old General, “ for ven- 
turing to come here without a letter of introduction. I 
hope you will forgive me. The fact is I have seen your 
picture in the Academy” — and there he broke off short, 
as if expecting Rachel to say something. 

“ Yes ?” said she inquiringly. 

“ It pleases me very much. I have been in Afghani- 
stan, and that picture carries me back more years than 
I care to own to. Have you sold it ?” 

“ No,” said Rachel simply. 

“ You have had a great many inquiries after it, Ray,” 
broke in Mrs. Damas, who still feared that the girl 
might give herself away — “ and several very good offers. 
One dealer, indeed, has Miss Dudley’s promise of the 
picture for three figures, if it is not sold when the 
exhibition closes,” she added to the General. 

“ I am sure that it must have attracted a great deal 
of attention,” said he suavely. “ It is an admirable 
picture. However, I trust that this dealer man will 
not have the chance of it. He certainly will not if Miss 
Dudley’s price is not utterly beyond my means.” 

“Miss Dudley is asking ” Mrs. Damas began 

eagerly, afraid still that Rachel’s courage would fail 
her at the last moment. 


HARVEST. 


119 


u Five hundred pounds,” broke in Rachel sharply. 

Mrs. Damas bent down again over her palette to hide 
the smile which she could not repress. General 
Yandeleur looked relieved and drew a long breath. 

“Then the picture is mine,” he said triumphantly. 
“ I will send you a cheque for five hundred pounds to- 
morrow.” 

u Stay,” said Rachel, “ that is not quite all, 
General Yandeleur.” 

“ No ? Ah ! Some question of engraving, and so on — 
that right belongs to you, of course,” he said quickly. 

“ No,” said she, “ it is not a question of engraving. 
There is something else that I must tell you before you 
buy my picture. I paint, and for the present, for 
reasons of my own, I live under the name of Ray 
Dudley — but it is not my own name.” 

“ My dear Ray,” put in Mrs. Damas, “ this cannot 
affect General Yandeleur, or make any difference to the 
sale of your picture.” 

“ Not at all — not at all,” said the old man hastily. 

“ But it does matter to me very much,” said Rachel 
steadily. “General Yandeleur, my own name is Rachel 
Power.” 

* 

She stood up beside her easel, tall and straight and 
true, with a stronger and more dignified pride than 
he had ever possessed, plainly visible in the turn of the 
long white slender throat, the pose of her golden 
head, the determined set of the pretty rounded chin — 
stood and looked at him with her wonderful clear grave 
eyes, which seemed to go through and through him 
until he felt, poor old courtly arrogant mummy that 
he was, as if the whole world did not contain, unhung, 
so monstrous a villain as himself! 


120 


HARVEST. 


“You are Rachel Power?” he gasped — “my grand- 
daughter ! ” 

“ Unfortunately, yes,” said Rachel coldly. 

“ My dear, don’t say that,” he began ; but Rachel 
interrupted him by a gesture of her hand, a very proud 
and uncompromising gesture indeed. 

“ Unfortunately, yes,” she repeated. “ Knowing 
this, General Vandeleur, if you still care to buy my 
picture, you can do so ; if not, I shall be just as ready 
to forget that you ever offered to buy it as you could 
possibly be.” 

“ Certainly, I will buy it,” he cried rather hotly. 
“ But — have you nothing else to say to me ? ” 

“What else could I say?” asked Rachel wearily. 
“ Do you want me to remind you how I came back to the 
land of my forefathers, friendless, alone, poor ? How I 
went to my one living relative, not because I wished to go 
near the man who had disowned my mother, but because 
I had promised my dear dead father that I would go ? 
Do you want me to remind you how I was turned away 
from his door like a beggar — yes,” as he winoed under 
the words, “ like a beggar at the hands of a servant ?” 

“ I — I did not mean ” he began, when Rachel 

broke in again, all the weariness gone out of her voice 
now and only such a mighty scorn there that he fairly 
shivered under its scathing contemptuous ring 

“You did not mean — what ? 1 daresay your servant 

did not know that I was your own kith and kin, your 
own flesh and blood ! What matter ? He knew that I 
was a woman — he could see that I was a lady ; and yet 
he had to convey to me a message so brutal that he 
blushed as he gave it.” 

“ I left no message,” broke in the General furiously, but 


HARVEST. 


121 


oniy too glad of the chance of being able to shift the least 
little portion of blame on to other shoulders than his own. 

“ He gave no message,” said Rachel contemptuously. 
“ I said that he conveyed one. You intended him to do 
so — did you not ? Your servant, sir, is something better 
than a gentleman, for he was as kind in breaking to 
me that his task was to get rid of me and to let me 
know, without putting the fact into plain words, that 
you had been told of my visit and refused to see me, as 
any man could be. If you, sir, had been as really 
courteous as your servant, you would at least have gone 
to the trouble of sending |ne a message to my hotel 
instead of letting me come to your door again to be 
turned away as if I had been a beggar in the street.” 

“ You are very hard upon me,” he said humbly. 

“ Am I hard ? ” Rachel cried. “ Am I as hard as you 
have been? I think not. At least, I strike fair to 
your face — I don’t hire somebody else to strike my 
blows for me. Have I not the right to be hard ? 
Now , I dare say, you will be willing to own me ” 

“ Certainly — 1 shall be proud as well as willing to pro- 
claim you as my granddaughter,” he broke in eagerly. 

It was an unwise admission and Rachel was up in 
arms in a moment. 

“And why ? Because I have made a success, because 
my name is on everyone’s lips just now, because I have 
shown you that I ,an do very well without you — for 
these reasons you will own me ! I thank you greatly.” 

“ And you refuse to let me help you ! I can do so in 
many ways, I assure you,” he said quietly. 

“ When I wanted help, you refused it, sir,” answered 
Rachel proudly. “ Now that you offer it to me, I can 
do without it. It is no credit to you that I did not 


122 


HARVEST. 


when I found myself, alone and almost friendless as I 
was, turned rudely away from your door, that I did not 
go headlong to perdition. Happily, I have a great gift 
which has kept me from temptation of that sort — from 
its being a temptation, that is to say.” 

“ Good heavens ! You don’t mean to say that you 
have been offered temptation of that sort ? ” the old 
General cried, stung by the significance of her tone. 

Rachel bent her head. 

“ General Vandeleur,” she said, “ while we are 
speaking in language so plain, it would be false 
modesty in me to pretend that I do not know that I am 
a beautiful woman. Within a few hours of my second 
visit to your door, I had been besieged in the street in 
broad daylight, and the only man I believed in in the 
world asked me to become his mistress ! If I had not 
had my gift to work for, and my friend here to stand 
between me and that sort of thing, where do you think I 
should have been, and whose would have been the blame 
if I had not found myself able to stand firm against the 
evil of the world ; would it have been yours or mine ?” 

The old General found it the easiest to waive the 
question. “ You went out in London alone ? ” he said 
incredulously. 

“ And who,” asked Rachel innocently, “ was there to 
go with me ? Did you know or care where I went, or 
how, when you turned me away from your door that day?” 

At this point the old man gave in abjectly. 

“ Rachel,” he said, “you press my sins very hard 
home upon me. I am sorry I did as I did. I cannot 
say more. Will you not forgive and forget it all, and 
remember that this pride has been the habit of five and 
twenty years — aye, and longer than that ? ” 


HARVEST. 


123 


Rachel was softened, and, being softened, was con- 
quered in a moment. She gave a sigh, but she laid her 
hand in the trembling one which he stretched out to 
her. 

“ We will try to forget it,” she said simply. 

u And you will come home with me — you will take 
your proper position in society as my grandchild,” he 
went on, slipping back into his old habit of command at 
once. “ You can have a studio fitted up at once, and 
can follow your art just the same.” 

“ No,” said Rachel decidedly. “ I cannot do that. 
If you had taken me in when I came to you, I would 
have been the most dutiful and obedient grandchild in all 
the world, I think. But since then I have thrown in my 
lot with the Bohemian world, which thinks nothing of what 
men and women come from or who they belong to — 
only what they are and what they can do. I have tasted 
the sweets of freedom, and for the rest of my life I must 
be free. You are disappointed — well, I am sorry for 
that, but I cannot help it. You need not fear for me. 
I have got over all the worst of my life now. I can take 
care of myself, I promise you.” 

“ But you — I may come and see you ? ” he asked. 

“ Oh, yes. Why not ? I am sure Mrs. Damas will 
not object,” Rachel answered. 

“ I shall not object, I assure you,” said Mrs. Damas 
with a smile. 

So the old General went away from the house to which 
he had gone as a patron, feeling aged and humbled as 
he had never done in all his life before. 

u Rachel,” said Mrs. Damas excitedly, as they heard 
the carriage roll away, “you are a grand woman — I 
kiss my hand to you.” 



CHAPTER XIV. 


REFLECTIONS. 


11 Now her looks are coy and cold. 

To mine they ne’er reply, 

And yet I cease not to behold 
The love-light in her eye ; 

Her very frowns are fairer far 
Than smiles of other maidens are.** 

—Hartley Coleridge. 


TYTHEN the old General got into his carriage at Mrs 
▼ T Damas’s -door he did not turn the horses’ head 
in the direction of. home — on the contrary he drove 
away down the Fulham Road at a tidy pace, for he wanted 
to think it all over. 

He was too clever a man to try to blind himself to 
the truth, and the truth told him that every word the girl 
had spoken was true — that she had just cause for every 
reproach she had flung at him, just cause for the blaze 
of anger in the eyes which he fancied could be very 
soft at times, just excuse for the scorn and contempt 
in her cutting tones. 

In his whole memory he could not recall ever having 
had such reproaches flung at him, such looks cast at 
him ; he could not recall ever having been the conscious 
object of such contemptuous scorn. 

Yet, strange to say, he was not angry — and, mind 
you, taking the nature of the man into consideration, 


HARVEST. 


125 


it was strange. In truth, he was so full of admiration 
for her beauty and her talents, and of pride for her pluck 
and fearlessness, that he quite forgot his own outraged 
dignity and his own pride. What a grand creature she 
was, how dignified, how lovely, how gifted ! — why, even 
her anger attracted him ; he liked her all the better 
for flinging her hard words at him, and letting him see 
that she was in very truth his own kith and kin, of the 
same flesh and blood as himself. 

He did not disguise from himself that he had made a 
huge mistake in refusing to see her. He knew — no 
one better — that the girl had a just and real claim upon 
him, and that if, by any chance, she had become charge- 
able to the parish, he would have had to provide for her 
necessities. 

In all this he knew and admitted to himself that he 
had been wrong, utterly and completely wrong — and in 
his rather peculiar mind, once having admitted, if only 
to himself, that he was wrong, the admission served with 
him to condone the offence, and he never troubled him- 
self any more about it. I really do not know if a little 
real genuine arrogance is not an excellent quality to 
possess — it is to the mind exactly what chloroform is to 
the body, it deadens all those fine and sensitive feelings 
which, if indulged too freely, become morbid and depres- 
sing; it fully justifies all manner of minor sins, and 
makes the ways of modern life easy and fairly com- 
plaisant. Yes, I think, on the whole it is a very con- 
venient quality to have in one’s possession. 

Not for the moulding of a fine upright and manly 
character, you say. Quite so, but have I held General 
Vandeleur up to your notice as a fine upright and 
manly character ? If so, I did not know it. To me he 


126 


HARVEST. 


is only a proud, arrogant, overbearing old mummy, 
neither more nor less. 

But having admitted Rachel Power, in his own great 
mind, as a young lady possible and even desirable to 
introduce to the notice of the world as his grandchild, 
General Vandeleur set about thinking what he could do 
to shed a fitting lustre around the path of her daily life, 
30 as to make her absolutely worthy of the honour of 
being associated with him in the light of a near relative. 

She would not go to live with him, not at present 
at least, though in time he hoped he would be able to 
overcome all that difficulty. But she must be presented ; 
and the Duchess of West Kensington would be the 
proper person to see her through that business — he 
must go and talk to her about it very soon. 

And she must have a carriage of her own — that was 
a matter of course — a neat Victoria, and a little brougham 
for night use. At least, if he could do nothing else for 
her he could do that much, and, however independent she 
might fancy herself to be, General Vandeleur felt pretty 
sure that she would not, upon reflection, deny him the 
pleasure of indulging in a whim which would add so 
materially to her own everyday comfort. 

Just at first she might feel disposed to say no, but 
when he had represented to her, clearly and dispassion- 
ately, that by living out of his house, with an absence 
of all those surroundings which were necessary to hef 
station as his granddaughter, she would actually be 
doing him an incalculable injury, she would see the 
force of his arguments and would immediately fall in 
with his wishes. 

He altogether forgot — having salved over his very 
convenient conscience with that self-heard confession of 


HARVEST. 


12 / 


all his bygone sins of omission and commission — 
that he would thus give his granddaughter the oppor- 
tunity of reminding him that he had not always been so 
careful of what the world might think of his grand- 
child’s doings, or what the world might say of his 
denying her the protection of his house and leaving her 
to roam about London with no better safeguard than 
her own innocence. 

And then, all at once, there ^came to his mind a 
remembrance of another person, to whom the taking of 
his grandchild unto his bosom would make an enor- 
mous difference. “ Now, by Jove !” said he to himself, 
“I never thought about that in the least. It never 
entered my mind that poor Emily would have any 
children. By Jove ! that puts me in a nice hole.” 

He turned the horses’ heads and drove back to town 
again, reaching Portland Place just at dinner-time. 

“Has Mr. Harrington come?” he asked of the 
pompous butler. 

“ He has, sir,” returned the servant, with a solemnity 
that would not ill have befitted a funeral. 

Then he threw open the library door, and General 
Vandeleur walked briskly into the room like a man 
with a fresh idea and a new lease of life. 

“ How are you, my dear lad ?” he said in his most 
affectionate tones. 

Valentine Harrington got up and came to meet the 
old man, who had been father, mother, everything to 
him ever since he could remember. 

“ Quite well, thank you, sir,” he answered. “ Sharp 
wind to-day, isn’t there ?” 

“ I suppose there is — I haven’t felt it,” General Van- 
deleur answered. “ You’re feeling the effects of India 


128 


HARVEST. 


yet — eli ? I’m better used to it — ha ! ha ! H’m — five 
minutes to eight. I won’t dress to-night, Val. I’ll just 
go and wash my hands, but I won’t dress.” 

“ All right, sir.” 

In less than five minutes the old man was downstairs 
again, and when . dinner had been announced they 
went into the handsome dining-room together. They 
talked a little on more or less indifferent subjects, and 
once or twice the General looked very sharply at his 
godson ; at last he spoke. 

“ You are not well, my dear lad,” he said. 

" I don’t feel particularly well, sir,” said Valentine, 
leaning back in his chair and toying with his bread. ' 

“ Still hankering after that girl — eh ?” remarked the 
General. They were alone for the moment. 

“ I shall always hanker after her, sir,” said Val 
briefly. 

“ Nonsense — nonsense,” muttered the old man rather 
testily. 

He did not say any more, for they were no longer 
alone, and with all his want of consideration for the 
feelings of others, the old General was not the man to 
speak on such a subject before an audience. So they got 
through the meal, the General eating more than he 
drank, and Valentine drinking more than he ate — 
considerably more. Then, when the dessert had been 
handed, and they were alone with their cigarettes, he 
lost no time in getting on to the subject which just 
then lay nearest of all subjects to his heart. 

“ Have you been to the Academy at all this year, 
Val ? ” he asked, in a careless casual kind of way. 

“ Oh, yes, several times,” answered Valentine, 
unsuspiciously. 


HARVEST. 


129 


“ Ah ! Did you happen to notice a picture called 
‘A Fight for Life?’” 

“ By Ray Dudley — oh, yes. I saw it in Mrs. Damas’s 
studio on Show-S unday,” Yal replied. 

“ Oh, did you? Well, I bought it to-day,” said the 
General, more carelessly still. 

“ You don’t say so ? ” exclaimed Valentine in 
surprise. “ Well, it’s a fine picture, sir, and I must 
congratulate you on your taste. Did you go to a very 
long figure ?” 

“ Not outrageously so. I gave five hundred for it.” 

“ Five hundred — h’m. It’s a fair price, I think.” 

Valentine Harrington knew but little about the value 
of pictures, but one of the rules of his life was to always 
speak on all subjects with the air of an authority ; in 
nine instances out of ten he found it pay 

“ Did you see the lady who painted it ?” the General 
inquired, as if he had no real interest in asking the 
question, and none of any kind in hearing the 
answer. 

“I caught just a glimpse of her,” Val replied; “in 
fact, I asked to be introduced to her, but Lady Bar- 
dinge wouldn’t wait.” 

“Ah!” said the General vaguely, adding to him- 
self, “ Clever old stager, Lady Bardinge ! Wants to 
catch the lad for little Red-top.” 

“ I promised Mrs. Damas that Fd look m some time 
or other, but I never did,” Valentine went on, not 
meaning to convey a false impression or pervert the 
truth, but only explaining the position of affairs after 
the manner of fashionable people. 

“Ah, — well, I’m going there to-morrow and Fll 
take you with me,” said the General. “ I should like 

I 


130 


HARVEST. 


you to see Miss Dudley. She’s one of the prettiest 
girls I’ve met for a long time. When you’ve given me 
your opinion about her I’ll tell you all her history.” 

“ You know her then ?” 

“I never set eyes on her until this afternoon,” 
answered the General promptly, “but I know her 
family — well.” 

“ Very well, sir. What time will you go ? ” 

“ At twelve o’clock.” 

“ Shall I come here for you ? ” he asked. 

“ Yes, that will be the best — that will be the best,” 
the General answered. 

And at that moment, in Mrs. Damas’s studio, Rachel 
was sitting at the piano a-singing — 

“ * Nay,’ said Time , 4 we must not bide, 

The way is long and the world is wide. 

And we must be ready to meet the tide.’" 

The tide of the river of — Love. 




CHAPTER XV. 

SO WE MEET AGAIN. 


“ We walk through the world like the blind, not knowing whither 
we are going.”— Sevigne. 

“The wheel of fortune turns incessantly round, and who can say 
within himself, ‘ I shall to-day be uppermost.’ ” — Coxfucius. 


G ENERAL VANDELEUR had or thought that 
he had — which, as a general rule, amounts to 
the same thing — a very good reason for not telling 
Valentine Harrington at once that the young painter, 
Ray Dudley, who had set such a mark on the world of 
art that season, was no other than his own grandchild. 
And his idea» was this. Having recognised Rachel and 
acknowledged the relationship between them, his mind 
had naturally placed her at once in the position of his 
heiress. Then he had remembered how he had pledged 
himself to Valentine, how he had taken him at the 
time of his parents* death, had educated him ex- 
pensively, had brought him up with ideas and habits 
that were utterly extravagant for a lad who was almost 
penniless, how he had often and often spoken of him 
and to him as his heir. Therefore, he could not now 
turn him adrift, and yet, naturally enough, he could 
not help wishing that he were able to leave his own 
grandchild all his wealth, instead of but a portion 
of it. 


132 


HARVEST. 


His only idea of successfully solving this difficulty 
was by bringing about a marriage between his grand- 
daughter and his godson, and although to most 
persons a marriage between two handsome young people 
might seem an easy enough thing to accomplish, yet 
General Vandeleur had an uncomfortable remembrance 
of a conversation he had had with his godson several 
months before, when the young man had confessed to 
him that he was in loY.e and wanted to marry. 

He had a very uncomfortable remembrance of the 
merciless way in which he had used his power to what 
he called extricate Valentine out of his difficulty, and 
he had a sort of instinct that if he were to tell Val that 
this girl was his granddaughter, that astute young 
gentleman would see at once what was in his mind and 
would start an acquaintance under a disadvantage, the 
disadvantage of a determination to be neither led nor 
driven into that particular arrangement. 

So about half-past twelve the next morning the 
General’s carriage drew up at Mrs. Damas’s door. The 
pupils of the class which she held on that morning of the 
week were just leaving the house, and most of them glanced 
with interest at the smart park phaeton just as its 
occupants glanced at them. 

They met Mrs. Damas on the steps leading to the studio. 
“I am just rushing up to take off this,” she said to the 
General, and looking at her blouse. “ One gets so dirty 
at work, you know. Go into the studio, please ; Ray 
will be down in a few minutes.” 

“ May I present my godson — Mr. Harrington ? Or, 
stay, he does know you, I believe,” said the General. 

Mrs. Damas looked at him without any recognition in 
her glance. She was not a long-sighted woman, and it 


HARVEST 


133 


must be remembered that hundreds of young men were 
presented to her during the course of a year. She 
vaguely remembered having seen this one before, but 
when and where she had not the smallest idea. 

“ Oh, yes, we have met before,” she said pleasantly. 
“ How do you do ? Go into the studio, and I will come 
as soon as I have got rid of this.” 

So the General and Valentine went on into the large and 
now rather untidy studio. It bore many signs of recent 
use, and the open piano was littered* with music. The 
General walked up to Rachel’s picture — the one she had 
been finishing when he found her on the previous day. 
Valentine Harrington walked to the piano and looked at 
Che music. Someone had been singing, and had left the 
song open at the middle verse — if he had only known 
that it was his Rachel ! : — 

“ Stay, steerman, oh, stay thy flight 
Down the river of love ; 

See, summer is waning fast, 

Clouds gather above. 

Moor thy bark to the woodland shore. 

There to wander alone once more, 

Hand in hand, the old sweet way, 

Stay, stay, stay ! 

4 Nay,’ said Time, * we must not bide. 

The way is long and the world is wide, 

And we must be ready to meet the tide.’ ” 

The piano stood behind the door, and the door was 
shielded by a quaint Moorish screen, so that anyone who 
was standing by the keyboard could not be seen by 
another person coming into the room until he or she had 
got round the screen. So when Rachel came in and 
walked swiftly up to the old General, she was not aware 
that there was anyone else in the room. 

“I am so sorry to keep you waiting,” she said. 


134 


HARVEST. 


“ Mrs. Damas’s class was late this morning ; sometimes 
they get behind, you know.” 

“ I like to wait for you, my dear,” the old General 
said gallantly, £C and — er — I have brought my godson to 
see you. May I present him to you ? ” 

Rachel turned quickly in the direction indicated by 
his gesture and saw before her, standing with one hand 
resting on the corner of the piano, her old lover — 
Valentine Harrington. 

For a moment she felt as if she was going to make a 
scene — to fall down in a dead faint or burst into 
hysterical tears. She felt sick and dazed and altogether 
uncertain of herself — in fact, she could scarcely see him 
through the blood-red mist which danced in front of her 
eyes, and a dreadful singing noise which filled her ears 
made the old General’s voice sound like a voice in 
a far-off place, or as one coming to her through a heavy 
fog. 

“ Mr. Valentine Harrington,” said the General, 
thinking from what to him looked like hesitation in her 
manner, that she was waiting for him to speak and 
explain his godson further. 

For a moment it had no effect on Rachel — then some 
good angel sent a wave of remembrance of her dead and 
gone father to her mind and she roused herself out of 
her confusion and pain. She did more than that too, she 
went forward and offered him an ice-cold hand which 
had no pleasure, no sign of recognition about it. She 
looked him straight in the eyes and said in the tone of 
an utter stranger, “ I am very pleased to meet you,” 
then she dropped his hand and turned back to General 
Vandeleur again — and so Valentine Harrington knew 
from that moment that he must not only start afresh 


HARVEST. 


135 


but that he would have to go back and undo everything 
that he had done in the past. 

“ Val, I want you to look at this,” said the General, 
pointing to Rachel’s picture. 

Valentine went to look at the picture — still not 
understanding the position of affairs at all. 

“ It is a very fine thing,” he said, after a moment. 
“ And by the same lady who painted the 1 Fight for 
Life.’ Yes, I see there is the signature in the comer. 
Are you thinking of buying that also, sir ?” 

Something in his manner told both the General and 
Rachel that he had not understood that this was Ray 
Dudley. 

“ This is Miss Dudley, Val,” said the General, and 
when Valentine turned a blank face of astonishment 
upon Rachel, she only smiled slightly and put out her 
hands with a deprecating gesture of acquiescence in 
the statement. 

“You surprise me,” Valentine gasped, fairly taken 
aback with astonishment. 

Just then Mrs. Damas, radiant and fresh and bright, 
came in, looking trim and smart in her neat tailor gown 
and with her dark eyes blazing with the excitement of 
having Rachel’s old grandee of a grandfather come so 
soon to see her again. She gave him her best attention 
and at once took him away from the young people — 
knowing that Rachel would probably rather talk to the 
most empty-headed young man in London than to the 
old man who had up to yesterday treated her with such 
rude want of ordinary humanity. 

“ I fancy that you take great interest in old 
engravings, General Vandeleur,” she said, when they 
had exchanged greetings. 


136 


HARVEST. 


The General, as a matter of fact, knew as much as he 
cared to know about old engravings, which was nothing 
at all, but he too had an object in leaving the young 
people together, so he professed himself to Mrs. Damas 
as not only willing but desperately eager to see the big 
portfolio of more or less dingy engravings which she 
flung open on the flat top of the piano for his delectation. 

Thus Rachel was left, in a measure, at Valentine 
Harrington’s mercy, and he, you may be sure, did not 
let the opportunity slip. 

“ Rachel !” he said in a very low voice — “ Won’t you 
even speak to me ?” 

“Oh, yes — I have spoken to you,” said Rachel 
coldly. 

“You have addressed several words to me, it is true,” 
he said. “ You know that’s not what I mean. Come 
and show me those pictures at the other end of the 
studio. Do — darling.” 

She turned her grave gray eyes upon him, then moved 
away towards the pictures to which he had pointed. 

“ Don’t speak to me like that,” she said very coldly. 
“ It is a very great liberty ; your acquaintance with me 
is now a very slight one.” 

“ You are very cruel to me, Rachel,” he said reproach- 
fully. 

“ Am I ?” she answered. “ Perhaps so. You have 
not taught me how to be kind.” 

“ I will teach you if you will only let me,” he said 
eagerly. 

“ Many thanks — but I have learnt the other lesson 
too thoroughly,” she replied in the same chill tones. 

Valentine groaned within himself, but he felt that it 
^vas no use following up that line any longer. 


HARVEST. 


137 


" It’s no use my pretending that I am one of your 
acquaintances, Rachel,” he said with an odd mixture of 
humility and defiance.” If you can forget the past, I 
cannot ” 

“ I have no wish to forget the past,” she interrupted. 
“ It is done with for ever. It makes no difference to 
either of us whether we forget it or not.” 

“ It makes all the difference to me whether you forget 
it or not,” he retorted. 

Then there was a moment’s silence, and Valentine 
knew that he had come to another blind alley, so to 
speak. However, he was not at a loss to know what to 
talk about, and the General and Mrs. Damas were 
apparently utterly and entirely absorbed in their old 
engravings. 

“ How was it that you never told me that you could 
do this sort of thing ?” he asked, with that ill-used tone 
under which nine men out of ten generally take refuge 
when they know that they have been utterly in the 
wrong. He made a general gesture towards the pictures 
as he spoke, and Rachel answered quickly and to the 
point. 

“ I did not happen to tell you,” she said quietly. “ I 
had no desire to keep anything back that you ought to 
have known — but there was nothing in our intercourse 
to make me tell you, and somehow I never did tell you. 
I had not thought then of being in the Academy this 
year.” 

“ And now you are a great woman,” he said in just 
the old tender tone, so that Rachel shivered as she 
heard it. 

“ I hope to be a great woman some day,” she answered 
modestly. 


138 


HARVEST. 


“ Some day — oh, you are a great woman now, 
Rachel — a great woman. All London is talking of you. 
Why, when General Vandeleur asked me last night to 
come here to-day, I, sick and weary and tired of every- 
thing as you must see I am, I fairly jumped at the 
chance of seeing you.” 

“And how came you to know General Vandeleur so 
well ?” she asked suddenly. 

“ He is my godfather,” Valentine answered in some 
surprise. “ Surely I told you all about him ! Yes, I 
am certain I did.” 

“ You told me that you had a godfather,” said Rachel. 
“ You never told me his name ; not that it matters,” 
she ended, “ now.” 

“ And what a strange thing,” he said, taking no notice 
of the last unpleasant word — “ that he who was the 
means of parting us should be the unconscious means 
of bringing us together again. What an odd thing 
that my godfather should be your ” 

“ Valentine, my dear lad, it is time that we went,” 
said General Vandeleur, at that moment — “because 
Mrs. Damas has an appointment which will only just 
give her time to get her lunch. So come along. My 
dear, I should like to have that picture — put your own 
price upon it.” 

“ A hundred pounds,” said Rachel quietly. “ It is 
the same price I offered it to a dealer for yesterday.” 

“ And it is not sold ? ” 

“No — he offered her seventy — then seventy-five — then 
eighty pounds ; then rose to eighty guineas,” laughed 
Mrs. Damas, who, in her own mind, looked upon 
General Vandeleur as one of the most delightful old 
persons she had come across for a long time — “and 


HARVEST. 


139 


there lie stopped, and there at a hundred pounds Rachel 
stuck ; and finally they parted to think it over till this 
evening.” 

“ That dealer is a very sensible person,” remarked 
the General, with satisfaction ; “ I should like to make 
his acquaintance.” 

“ I doubt it,” cried Mrs. Damas with her merriest 
laugh. 

“I may come again?” said Valentine Harrington, 
imploringly, to Mrs. Damas as he took her hand. 

“ Oh, yes — any Saturday afternoon, and the third 
Sunday evening of the month,” she answered pleasantly. 

u So many thanks ; that will be next Sunday, won’t 
it ? I shall come then. Good-bye Miss Dudley — I may 
come again, I hope ?” 

“ Oh, yes,” said Rachel — but the words had a sound 
which meant “Oh, no,” and Valentine Harrington went 
out into the bright summer sunshine feeling as if the 
game was all up and Rachel was lost to him for ever. 

“Ray, my dear,” said Mrs. Damas as soon as the 
door was closed — “ where have I seen that young man 
before ? Did he ever come here with somebody ? ” 

“ I have seen him here before,” said Rachel, some odd 
and indefinable instinct prompting her to refrain from 
reminding Mrs. Damas when and under exactly what 
circumstances she had seen him before. 

“ What relation is he to the General — his son ?” 

“ No relation,” said Rachel — “ only his godson.” 

“ His godson — oh !” said Mrs. Damas ; then after ft 
pause — “ a handsome young man, Ray.” 

“ Yes,” answered Rachel simply. 



CHAPTER XVL 

NEW HOPES. 

•* Let no vain hope deceive the mind ; 

No happier let us hope to find 
To-morrow than to-daj 
Our golden dreams of yore were bright, 

Like them, the present shall delight, 

Like them decay.” 

— Manrique. 

“ T^TTHAT do you think of her ?” demanded the old 
▼ V General, as they turned out of the square. 

“ I think she’s the loveliest woman I ever saw in my 
life,” said Valentine promptly, but looking straight in 
front of him. 

“ Ah !” and then the old man paused, in truth 
scarcely knowing how to put the remark he wanted to 
make into words, scarcely, indeed — remembering the 
past, the not very distant past — having the face to sug- 
gest a marriage to Valentine at all. “ Pity she’s not 
married,” he said at last, a little awkwardly. 

“ It is,” returned Valentine, who did not think it was 
a pity at all, quite the contrary, in fact. “ I dare say 
she will marry, sir, by-and-bye.” 

“Oh! I’ve no doubt — no doubt” — said the General 
rather testily, “ but the question is who will she marry ? 
Who will she marry ? * 


HARVEST. 


141 


“ He’ll be a lucky beggar whoever he is,” said Mr. 
Valentine Harrington, not in the least guessing what 
his godfather was driving at and feeling that, as far as 
he was concerned, general terms would be safe. 

The General looked sharply round — “ You think so, 
Val ? ” he asked anxiously. 

“Yes, I do,” Val answered, promptly. 

The General drew a long breath of relief; but he 
scarcely knew what to say next. 

“ You will be there on Sunday evening, eh ? 99 he 
asked, not because he was really desirous of obtaining 
information on that point, but because he did not want 
to get off the subject. 

“ Oh ! I think so, sir,” Val answered with due solem- 
nity and apparent indifference. “ And you ?” 

“Yes, I shall go. I am anxious to see her in society. 
Just seeing her in the studio, partly overshadowed too 
by comparison with Mrs. Damas, who is one of the most 
brilliant women in London, is scarcely to see her at all.” 

“ You take a great interest in the lady,” said Valen- 
tine, who began to wonder what all this beating about 
the bush meant and whether his godfather was thinking 
of marrying her himself. 

The old General laughed. “Well, my lad, if you 
must have the truth, I’ve not been very open with you 
about this matter,” he admitted. 

Valentine felt perfectly sure that he was right, and 
his heart began to beat hard and not very regularly in 
a way which was highly uncomfortable to him. Good 
Heavens ! what if Rachel, just out of a mistaken pride, 
should go and marry the old man as a sort of proof 
that she had no forgiveness for the mistake he had 
made in asking her to make a sacrifice for him ! What 


142 


HARVEST. 


should he do then ? And how particularly disagreeable 
and unpleasant every circumstance of his life would be 
afterwards ! In truth, he turned upon the General a 
face so blank that the old man felt quite guilty. 

“ The fact was, Yal,” he said, quite humbly for him, . 
“ I — I wanted you to see her without any kind of pre- 
judice in your mind about her ! I wanted to have your 
unbiassed opinion about her ” 

“Well?” said Valentine. 

“ Well — her name is not Ray Dudley at all,” said the 
General. “ It is Rachel Power.” 

“ Rachel Power,” repeated the young man, who was 
beginning to feel sick and dazed with the pain of 
hearing this spun out and as it were “broken” to him. 

“ And she is my granddaughter” the General said ; 
getting the truth told at last. 

Valentine fairly gasped ! Not that it mattered — the 
General took for surprise what was really an expression 
of intense relief. 

* Your — granddaughter , sir,” he exclaimed, incredu- 
lously — “ your granddaughter 

“ Yes ; my granddaughter,” the General asserted. 

“ And very proud of her I am, Val — very proud of 
her.” 

For one moment there was dead silence Detween 
them ! Through Valentine’s brain a confused medley 
of past events was flying — of how his darling (yes, he 
called her his darling, having long ago forgiven himself 
for the slight which he had put upon her) — of how his 
darling had come home in fear and trembling to her one 
relation, and had been rudely and unfeelingly rejected 
and turned from the door of her own kith and kin, as if 
she had been a beggar; and with the strange un- 


HARVEST. 


143 


reasonableness of weak humanity, at that moment lie 
had forgotten all that the old man had done for him 
during his whole life, and was only filled with a 
burning desire to just take him down on to the pave- 
ment and thrash him. 

General Vandeleur saw something of this in his god- 
son’s face ; but he was, as I have had occasion to remark 
before, an arrogant old mummy who had never troubled 
himself much about the feelings of others, so it is not 
surprising that he mistook Valentine’s expression then. 

“ You’re thinking about the property, my dear lad,” 
he said, laying his hand affectionately upon the young 
man’s arm. “ It will make no difference to you, Val, or 
very little.” 

“ I was not thinking of money at all, sir,” returned 
Val shortly. 

It was true enough. He was thinking of that after- 
noon when he had gone to Morley’s, and found his 
darling shaking and quivering under the pain of her 
rejection — he was thinking what an angel of goodness 
she was to even allow the old autocrat to buy her 
pictures. And then — then — a sudden joyous thought 
flashed into his mind — if she could forgive such a brutal 
slight as that which her grandfather had put upon her; 
surely, surely, she would be able to forgive him, who 
had wronged her only through the excess of his love — 
for that was how he put it — the love which would not 
let him drag her blindly into poverty and pain for the 
rest of her life. 

It is wonderful how ingeniously men and women 
can apply the salve of righteousness to their own 
sadly seared consciences. It is wonderful how we 
can, most of us, twist and turn the truth so as to make 


144 


HARVEST. 


it suitable to our own wishes. No, I don’t mean to 
tell lies, not at all — to lie is an exceedingly vulgar verb, 
which nobody in respectable society should be able to 
conjugate ; to tell a story in one’s own way is quite a 
different matter. For instance — it is not very long ago 
that I was dining at a certain house — not a very large 
party — where I met two ladies, one a woman of some 
distinction, the other a pretty woman of no occupation, 
very anxious to be thought “smart.” 

What Mrs. Distinction had done to offend Mrs. 
Smart I could not pretend to say for I do not know, 
but from one end of that dinner to the other she could 
not possibly have taken greater pains to snub any un- 
fortunate lady than she did to snub Mrs. Distinction. 
And I must admit that I was filled with wonder to 
guess why a clever quick-witted sharp-tongued woman, 
such as I knew Mrs. Distinction to be, did not rise up 
promptly and, so to speak, slay her enemy. 

But she did not seem to think of doing it —she allowed 
herself to be dazzled by Mrs. Smart’s brilliant circle 
of friends, her popularity, her house, and her servants, 
her “at home” days, and the going out that she 
managed to get through ; in fact, she did rather moro 
than allow herself to be dazzled, she sat open-mouthed, 
like one thirsting for information. 

At last Mrs. Smart abandoned the more or less 
safe ground of generalities and went into detail — always 
a dangerous proceeding. 

“Do you know Mrs. Van Hyphen?” she asked of 
Mrs. Distinction. 

“ No, I can’t say I do,” said the other. Mrs. Smart 
preened herself like a peacock. 

“ Oh ! I know her very well,” she remarked superbly. 


HARVEST. 


145 


“ I always enjoy her parties so much ! you meet every 
body there.” 

“ Do you really ? ” said Mrs. Distinction, still with 
the thirst-for-information air. 

“ Oh, yes ! Of course she is more, popular, and more 
sought after than any other woman in London — every 
body knows that.” 

“ She’s such an awful-looking person,” Mrs. Dis- 
tinction put in. 

“ Oh, that’s because she got her complexion ruined 
in India,” Mrs. Smart explained. “ She was a very 
beautiful woman once, you know, and she puts this 
complexion stuff on quite to please her husband — quite 
on that account. She does not care herself one way or 
the other, but her husband says to her, ‘ My dear, you 
don’t look a bit like yourself, unless you do put it on, 
and I wish you to do it.’ Why, she has actually tried 
to leave off using it, but he always begs her to put it on 
again.’ 

“ Really !” said Mrs. Distinction, quite humbly, “ I 
never heard that story before — I’ve heard something 
like it.” 

So had I — which was, briefly, that Mr. Van Hyphen 
came home from India to find that his wife had taken 
to art to conceal, we will not say the progress of 
time but the ravages of an Oriental clime. “ I’ll live 
with no woman who paints her face,” he is reported to 
have said, “so, my dear, I insist upon your coming 
down in the morning with your face washed” 

Like an obedient wife, this was what Mrs. Van Hyphen 
did- -but when the husband’s astonished eyes beheld her, 
he called out — “ You were quite right — you were quite 
right ! For God’s sake go and put it on again !” 


146 


HARVEST. 


It’s the same story you see, my dear reader, but 
with a difference ! 

Now it was very much after this fashion that 
Valentine Harrington worked out the difference between 
meum and tuum ) in conjunction with the verb “ to slight,” 
as applied in the past tense to the girl he loved, 
Rachel Power. As I say, it is a habit with most 
of us. 

“You were not thinking about the property, Val,” 
said the General. “ What then ? Not about that other 
girl, I hope.” 

“That other girl!” repeated Valentine, in such 
genuine amazement that his godfather began for a 
moment or so to think that the lad was ill, or taking 
leave of his senses. 

“ Yes — the girl you wanted to marry when you first 
came home,” he explained testily. 

Valentine turned and looked at him as blankly as 
if he had never heard of “ that other girl ” in all his life 
before — at least that was the impression that his looks 
conveyed to the old General. Then .3 suddenly 
remembered that his godfather was utterly ignorant of 
the fact that he had wished to marry Rachel, and some 
subtle feeling prompted him to say nothing about it 
until he had made more way with her and reclaimed 
some of that affection which he had lost by his own 
stupid blundering folly. 

“ Oh ! I had forgotten all about that,” he said with 
a laugh. 

“ I’m glad of that, my boy — I’m glad of that,” cried 
the General gladly. “ And you think you’ll be good 
friends with my granddaughter — eh ?” 

“ I hope so, sir,” answered Valentine.* 


HARVEST. 


147 


Then there was a moment’s pause, and just then 
they turned into Portland Place. 

“I want to ask you a plain question, sir,” said 
Valentine quietly. 

“Ask it,” said the General in reply. “I’ll give 
you a plain answer.” 

“Well, sir, have you any idea of my marrying Miss 
Power ?” he asked. 

“I should be exceedingly happy if you did,” the 
General answered. 

Valentine looked straight ahead, too stunned by the 
unexpected turn which events had taken to speak a 
word ; the General went on speaking. 

“ Of course, it is early days yet,” he began, quite 
apologetically for him — but Valentine broke in, 

“ I would marry her to-morrow if she would have 
me.” he said quietly. “To-morrow, — aye, to-day — 
nuvj /” 





CHAPTER XVII. 

AT HOME IN BOHEMIA. 

*« Fame, they tell you, is air ; but without air there is no life for 
any ; without fame, there is none for the best.” — L andor. 

“ Human felicity is made up of many ingredients.” — J ohnson. 

I THINK in spite of Mrs. Smart’s assertion as to the 
wide-spread popularity of Mrs. Van Hyphen, that 
indisputably Mrs. Damas’s drawing-rooms and studio 
were the nearest approach to a salon that could be 
found in London. Sooner or later everybody of any 
note was to be seen there on Saturday afternoons, or on 
the third Sunday evening of the month. 

On this particular evening, being in the height of 
the season, there was a larger and more interesting 
gathering than usual. There were poets and painters, 
authors and actors, journalists and war correspondents, 
I might almost say without end. 

Mrs. Damas, in a flame-coloured gown, was radiant and 
happy because she had at last got “ her child,” as she 
called Rachel, into a dainty silken frock of ivory white, 
such as made the young painter, whom everybody wanted 
to see and know, look younger and fairer than ever. It 
was a pretty gown too, made with folds everywhere 
which came up snug and cosily round the arms and 
were gathered up into mere knots on the shoulders, with 


HARVEST. 


149 


large clasps or brooches of Indian silver. In her hand 
she carried a posy of beautiful white flowers, brought to 
her by a great painter, one of the august Forty, who 
wished to show her special honour, and when Valentine 
Harrington came in and saw it, he simply cursed himself 
that he had not had the sense to pay her a similar atten- 
tion earlier in the day. However, it was no use crying 
over that particular spilt milk now, so he went up to 
Eachel with a very proprietorial air and wished her good 
evening in his best manner, a manner which conveyed 
to most of those who were thronging around her the 
information that, now he had come, everybody else might 
retire from the field as there was not the smallest ghost 
of a chance of any one of them getting so much as a 
word in edgeways. 

This might have done very well if Rachel had helped 
him at all by her manner, but she did not, unfortunately 
for him, do so. And in Bohemian society, in those cases 
where the lady most concerned makes no difference in 
her manner to those who are most anxious to talk to 
her, it takes a wonderful amount of that kind of “ side ” 
(oh, refined and gentle critic, forgive me for the use of 
the word — I have put it in commas so that the pill 
shall be somewhat sugared for you) which constituted 
the chief charm of Harrington’s manner, to make the men 
who are sure of their footing in Bohemia accept cold 
shoulder and betake themselves out of the way. 

“ Ah ! Who’s the fellow trying to get Miss Dudley to 
himself?” one Bohemian asked of another. 

“Haven’t the least idea. Army man, I fancy,” replied 
the other. 

“ Ah ! What interest does he think he can possibly 
have for her ?” said the first m&n j then squared himself 


150 


> 


HARVEST. 

up and sauntered across to Miss Dudley with that 
indescribable man-about-town air of “ see me cut him 
out,” with a parting remark of “ I’m going to talk to 
her myself.” 

Now the experienced woman of fashion, whether it be 
of Society fashion or Bohemian fashion, can generally 
contrive to talk most to the men that please her best, 
and when Rachel turned to the painter and gave him her 
best attention, Harrington could not quite make out 
whether it was because she did not want to talk to him, 
or because she was not already enough used to the ways 
of that particular class of society to be able to give “ the 
painter-fellow” the cold shoulder. 

As a matter of fact Rachel was but too glad to be 
interrupted. To stand among all these strangers with 
Harrington beside her in the position of the one person 
who had known her as Miss Power, was the last wish 
she had in her mind ; and she welcomed the painter, 
who was young and more than ordinarily successful, 
with a cordiality which was almost effusive. 

“ Who is my granddaughter talking to now ?” said 
General Yandeleur to Mrs. Damas just at that moment. 

“ Oh, that is Pharaoh, the painter,” said Mrs. Damas, 
in a tone which conveyed to him that Mr. Pharaoh was 
a person of the greatest importance. 

“Pharaoh! — Pharaoh!” repeated the General vaguely. 
As a matter of fact he knew perfectly well who Pharaoh 
was and what he had done, but he had just seen him 
unmistakably cut Valentine Harrington out with 
Rachel, and he resented it accordingly. 

“ He painted that wonderful picture of { Cleopatra * in 
last year’s Academy,” Mrs. Damas went on — “quite 
the greatest success of the season ; and this year he has 


HARVEST. 


151 


done better work still. Oh, he will be a great man 
one day — one day ! why, he is a great man now,” Mrs. 
Damas cried, with the genuine warmth with which only 
a truly great woman ever speaks of another worker in 
her own line. 

“ Ah ! — really ! ” returned the General, who, proud as 
he was of his granddaughter’s success, looked upon the 
followers of all branches of art as “ that sort of person, 
don’t you know” — “Not much to look at — eh, Mrs. 
Damas ? ” 

“We think more of what people are than what they 
look like, in our world, General,” said Mrs. Damas 
brusquely. “ But I see nothing amiss with his looks. 
Do you see that woman who has stopped to speak to 
them now ? That is Mrs. Angelo, who wrote that 
wonderful book on Decorative Art — Oh ! you haven’t 
read it. Then I needn’t offer to introduce you.” 

“ Thanks, no — but,” said the General diplomatically, 
“I should like to know the young painter with the 
Egyptian name, Mr. Pharaoh. You have interested me 
in him.” 

Mrs. Damas beamed out all over her resolute face, 
like bright sunshine on a stem October morning. 
“ Come with me — I shall be delighted to introduce you,” 
she said, falling into the trap at once. “ I know you’ll 
like him — everybody does.” And then, like a brilliant 
streak of light in her flame-coloured gown, she went 
across the room and intimated to Mr. Pharaoh, with a 
look which signified that he was to be civil, that General 
Yandeleur had asked to be introduced to him. 

Mr. Pharaoh was disgusted ! Of course he was 
perfectly willing to know rich and important old 
gentlemen, who might, and possibly would, make them- 


152 


HARVEST. 


selves useful in buying his pictures ; but, just at that 
moment he had come to the conclusion that the best 
thing for him to do would be to get married to somebody 
whose tastes would be congenial to his own, and he had 
also come to the conclusion that the new painter, Ray 
Dudley, was the prettiest girl he had seen for a long 
time, and that she had just the head that he had so long 
been hungering and waiting for for a study of the great 
picture he was then painting, which was to outshine 
everything with which he had already startled the world, 
and to place his name among the great names of the 
century. Thus, swayed as he was by pleasure and 
profit, Mr. Pharaoh had just made up his mind to 
cultivate Ray Dudley’s society with a view to ulterior 
arrangements which might be good for them both, and 
while the Army man was still waiting about for a 
chance of ousting him he did not want to have his 
attention taken from the object in hand, even for the 
sake of making himself pleasant to the rich old gentle- 
man, who probably wanted or would want to buy his 
pictures. However, in a celebrity (a wise one, that is, 
who means to keep a clear head in all relations of life), 
the instinct of making himself agreeable is very strong, 
and he stood and patiently listened to the old General’s 
twaddle about pictures in general and his own in 
particular, with as much courtesy and attention as if 
he had been the august Forty combined in his own 
well-preserved — well-mummified, if you will — -old 
person. 

“ I think you bought Miss Dudley’s Academy picture,” 
he remarked, when the General had brought his obser- 
vations to a close. 

“ Yes, I am happy to say I did,” said the General, 


HARVEST. 


153 


who was burning to talk about his granddaughter and 
did not like to begin without a lead. 

“I thought so. Well, sir, I must congratulate you 
in having secured a really fine picture. The drawing is 
magnificent, ’pon my word ; there’s a bit of fore- 
shortening in the arm of the officer still fighting which 
is a master-piece — I should be proud to have done it, 
sir. And the colour is exquisite — exquisite.” 

“Yes — I thought so myself,” said the General, highly 
pleased at having his judgment thus commended; for, 
of course, he had mado up his mind to buy the picture 
without having the least idea of the identity of the 
painter — “ though, of course, I bought the picture 
more for the subject than for its merit. And then I 
must tell you,” he went on, with an odd mixture of 
humility and hauteur which amused the clever painter 
infinitely, “ that Miss Dudley is my granddaughter.” 

“You don’t say so!” exclaimed the younger man in 
genuine astonishment. “Well, I am surprised — and 
yet I don’t know that I ought to be, for she’s very like 
you to look at — very like. Then, how ever did she get 
her wonderful knowledge of detail and the general 
tone of Indian, or rather Eastern, scenery? I quite 
imagined that she had been out there.” 

“ My granddaughter was born and brought up in 
India,” the General answered. “ I never saw her until 
she was grown-up — until a very short time ago, in 
fa ct.” 

“ Ah ! I thought so. But where did she get her 
knowledge of painting ? ” 

“ She was several years in Rome,” said the General 
proudly. 

“ Ah ! I see — I see,” said Mr. Pharaoh, “ I see ! n 


154 


HARVEST. 


Meantime, Rachel had been left for a moment or so 
unworried by the crowd. “ Do come and sit down,” 
said Harrington. 

“ I want to stand up,” said Rachel. 

“ But,” he persisted eagerly, “ if I was some artist- 
chap that you couldn’t possibly take any interest in 
and I asked you to come and sit down, you’d go and do 
it — now wouldn’t you ? ” 

“ I might,” she admitted. 

“ Then you might come and sit down now for ten 
minutes with me,” he urged, “ or let me take you for 
a cup of coffee or something. Do, dear ; I won’t say 
one word to vex you — I’ll be as polite and as distant as if 
I’d only just been introduced to you and I didn’t care 
a brass farthing for you.” 

In spite of herself, Rachel could not help laughing, 
and Harrington took advantage of the smile to press 
his claim yet further. “ Come,” he said, in the old 
sweet imperative way which had always been so 
dangerous to her. 

And Rachel took his arm and went. 

He settled her on a comfortable lounge and brought 
her a glass of champagne and some delicate sand- 
wiches, and having suitably provided for himself, he 
sat down beside her with the air of a man who was 
taking a well-earned rest. 

“ You know I’m going to leave the Service, Rachel,” 
he said, when he had finished his glass of champagne. 

“ Are you really ? ” she cried, forgetting that she had 
set herself to take no further interest in him. 

“ Yes ; I sent in my papers yesterday.” 

“ But why ? Oh, what a pity,” she exclaimed. 

“ Yes, perhaps it is rather a pity,” he returned ; 


HARVEST. 


155 


u but I’ve done some pretty rough service, and I don’t 
know that the game is altogether worth the candle. I 
should never care to spend my whole life at it, and the 
General seems to prefer that I should stop in London.” 

“ I see,” she said thoughtfully. 

“ What a strange thing that my godfather should turn 
out to be your grandfather,” he said, after a pause. 

“ Yes, a very strange thing,” she agreed. 

“You know I consider that the old boy treated you 
very badly,” he went on. 

“He might have been kinder, that is true,” she 
admitted. 

“But it’s better to forget and forgive mistakes of 
that kind, don’t you think, Rachel ? ” 

“ Unquestionably,” she answered. 

“ It’s such bad form to keep up resentment because 
some one, who otherwise may be an uncommonly good 
sort of chap, once made an ass of himself — don’t you 
think ? ” 

“ Yes,” said Rachel rather doubtfully. 

“ And it isn’t right — it’s un-Christian — it’s — it’s posi- 
tively heathenish,” he went on, warming well to his 
subject as he pursued it. “ Yes, by Jove ! it’s positively 
heathenish. Now when I ever make an ass of my- 
self,” he continued confidentially, “nobody knows it 
sooner than I do, and nobody is or ever could be 
more sorry for my idiocy than I generally am. And 
when that happens I never mince matters at all, either 
to myself or to anybody else, but I just eat humble pie 
at once, and plenty of it. Depend upon it, Rachel, if 
you are wrong and you know you’re wrong, there's 
nothing in the wide world like owning up.” 

“ Oh, nothing,” said Rachel. 


156 


HARVEST. 


“ Excepting a show of mercy on the other side,” ho 

suggested. 

“ Yes, it is a good thing for the other side to be 
merciful,” Rachel admitted. 

Harrington stretched himself and settled down still 
more comfortably on the wide lounge — he felt all at 
once that the day was his, that he had only to per- 
severe a little and Rachel would forget all about the past 
in which he had made such an unmitigated ass of himself 
“ I’m very glad that you feel like that, darling,” he 


Of course I know that you’ve been awfully 



angry with me, but you must know that I never meant 
to offend you or meant you quite to look at things in 
the way you did. It was only that my devotion to you 
was so great, so utter, that I could not, would not, run 
the risk of plunging you into dire poverty — you under- 
stand that, don’t you, darling ?” 

“ I think,” said Rachel very quietly, “ that I under- 
stand you perfectly — perfectly; better, perhaps, than 
anyone ever understood you before. You promised me, 
when we came in here, that you would be as polite and 
distant as if you had but just been introduced to me. 
Do you think, now, that this is quite the conversation 
I should have had with Mr. Pharaoh if he had brought 
me in here ?” 

“Who is Mr. Pharaoh ?” he asked jealously. “The 
man you were talking to just now?” 

“Yes. He is the painter, you know — the coming 
man — the man of the day for that matter,” she 
answered. 

“ Ah ! a painter-fellow— yes !” Harrington drawled. 
“ But you couldn’t possibly have had any conversation 
which would interest you with a chap like that.” 


HARVEST. 


157 


" But lie does interest me greatly,” she exclaimed. 

“ Really ? How very odd ! Well, darling, I might 
almost feel jealous of this Mr. Pharaoh if 1 did not know 
that you had forgiven me everything — and you have, 
have you not ? You will remember only my devotion 
and not my mistakes ?” 

“ There was a man once who died,” said Rachel 
quietly, “and went up and knocked at the door of 
Heaven. 

“ 1 Hallo! * said St. Peter, £ what do you want? * 

“ £ 1 want to come in,’ said the man. 

“ £ What’s your qualification ?’ asked St. Peter. 

“ £ I’ve been married,’ answered the man, not able to 
think of any other. 

“ £ Oh, come in, come in,’ said St. Peter (who was 
himself a married man), ‘that’s qualification enough 
for us.’ 

“Well, immediately behind there came another man, 
who had heard this conversation, and who saw the first 
man pass in. 

“ £ Well,’ said St. Peter, £ and what do you want ?’ 

“ £ I want to come in,’ said the second man. 

“ * Oh — and what’s your qualification ?’ 

“ £ Well, I’ve been married twice,’ said the man, 
feeling that he had an infinitely better chance than the 
last applicant. 

“ £ Oh, go away, go away,’ cried St. Peter, £ you didn’t 
know when you were well off ; we want no fools here,’ 
and promptly shut the door in the unfortunate’s face.” 

“ It’s a very funny story — I fancy I’ve heard it be- 
fore,” said Harrington, genuinely puzzled. “ But I 
don't see why you should tell it to me, nor the appligation 
of it." 


158 


HARVEST. 


u I saw it in my own mind,” said Rachel demurely. 
u But perhaps it was unusually far-fetched and obscure ; 
anyway, I’ll not repeat it or explain it — the joke is not 
good enough.” 

She got up from the cosy lounge and went to speak 
to a lady just as it dawned upon Harrington that to * 
most persons a man or woman who is caught twice in the 
same trap is a fool for whom there is no excuse and 
towards whom no mercy can be shown. He was in the 
act of rising to follow her when the thought flashed 
into his mind, and he sat down again with a suppressed 
groan, feeling as if he had come to another blind alley 
of his intercourse with Rachel Power. 





CHAPTER XVIII. 

MR. pharaoh’s suggestion. 

** If you would fall into any extreme, let it be on the side of 
gentleness. The human mind is so constructed that it resists 
rigour and yields to softness.” — St. Francis de Sales. 

** Shall I write to her f Shall I go f 

Ask her to marry me by-and-bye f 
Somebody said that she’d say — No ; 

Somebody knows that she’ll say — Aye.** 

—Tennyson. 

A FEW weeks had gone by, the season was fast 
drawing near to its close and people were talk- 
ing more about their plans for the autumn than of any 
other subject. 

Valentine Harrington being now a free man, was all 
anxiety to find out something of Rachel’s plans for 
spending the autumn; but Rachel was not an easy 
woman to get information from when she had made up 
her mind not to give it, and finally, he had to make 
use of the old General to find out what he was so par- 
ticularly anxious to know. 

Not that he asked the General in plain words to do 
him this service — Valentine Harrington seldom put 
his wishes into plain words at any time, and never on 
such an occasion as this. But he incited the General by 
careless inquiries as to whether he meant to ask hia 


160 


HARVEST. 


granddaughter to the Priory during the autumn or not, 
and the General, straightway falling into the trap, 
made it his business to go at once to Rachel and lay his 
plans before her. 

“ Go to the Priory !” said Rachel, when she became 
aware of his wishes. “ Oh, I’m very sorry, I’m sure — 
but the fact is, Mrs. Damas and I have made all our 
plans, and I don’t quite see how we can manage even 
to put in a week anywhere else.” 

“ But, my dear,” said the old General reproachfully, 
“ how could you dream of completing all your arrange- 
ments without first hearing what my plans were ? You 
might have been sure that I should wish you to spend 
at least some part of the autumn with me.” 

“ Yes, of course I might,” returned Rachel very 
quietly; “but then you see, General Yandeleur, I have 
got out of the way of waiting to see what other people 
will or will not do.” 

The General winced under this home-thrust, the 
more so because he saw plainly that it was not intended 
as a home-thrust at all, but was merely a statement of 
fact. He had so long ago forgiven himself for his first 
reception of his granddaughter that he could hardly 
understand that she was not as proud of him as he was 
of her ; and every now and again Rachel showed him 
this as plainly as unconsciously. 

“ But you could not imagine, my dear, that I should 
have a house-party at the Priory without you there,” he 
said, the reproach giving way to positive ill-usage. 

“ I am afraid I am very stupid and ignorant,” 
answered Rachel simply, “ but I really do not know 
anything about the Priory — I never heard of it. Is it 
your country house ? ” 


EAEVEST. 


161 


General Vandeleur looked, as lie felt, just as if he was 
going to be very ill. Here was his own granddaughter, 
his nearest, his closest kith and kin, his heiress, and 
she actually did not know that he was Vandeleur of the 
Priory, Colchester. It was incredible — nay more, it 
was monstrous. 

“You remember your mother ? ” he burst out. 

“ Oh, yes.” 

“ And she never told you about the Priory ? ” 

“ Not a word. My mother never mentioned you to 
me. All I knew when I came home — and it was very 
little — I learned from my father ; but he never men- 
tioned any Priory to me.” 

“ But do you mean to tell me that neither you nor 
Mrs. Damas have ever looked me out in the Red Book”— 
the old man almost shouted in his indignation and disgust. 

Rachel went off into a gay fit of laughter. 

“ The Red Book ! ” she cried. “ Why, I never even 
saw one — oh, yes ! I’ve heard of it — but what do you 
think either Mrs. Damas or I can want to read one for? 
I have got a great name to make, which is not so easy 
a thing as you might fancy, and she has got a great 
name to keep, which is just about ten times harder to 
do — so what do we want to be worrying ourselves about 
the Red Books for ? For my part I think ten thousand 
times more of the Academy Catalogue than I do of all 
the Red Books and peerages in the world.” 

The General’s feeling of illness increased with every 
word his granddaughter uttered ; he felt very much as 
a hen must feel when the young duckling she has 
hatched among her own brood all at once gets beyond 
her power and authority, and in spite of her loud 
duckings of fear and the wild fluttering of her 

L 


162 


HARVEST. 


feathers, suddenly takes to the water and swims away 
boldly and bravely whither she has neither the nerve 
nor the inclination to follow. 

“ Then what are you going to do this autumn ? ” he 
asked quite meekly, feeling that a show of authority 
would be useless since it would be but a sham. 

“ Mrs. Damas and I have taken rooms in a delight- 
ful old farm-house for three months,” she answered, 
“ close to the sea, in a lovely part of the country — in 
Cornwall, in fact. And there we are going to work, 
for several other painters have got rooms in the neigh- 
bourhood and we mean to form a sort of temporary 
guild for real hard work.” 

u Anybody I know amongst them ? ” the General 
asked with well-assumed carelessness. 

“Yes, I think you know Mr. Pharaoh,” Rachel 
answered. 

“ Oh ! — yes, I’ve seen nim,” said the General shortly 
and with a sniff that was almost a snort. “ They say 
he is clever.” 

“ He is more than ordinarily clever,” said Rachel, 
mildly ; “ he is a genius. It is a great thing for a man 
of his age to have done such work as his. I am very 
proud of knowing him.” 

General Vandeleur gave a sniff of intense disgust — 
that his granddaughter should be proud of knowing 
“ this painter-fellow,” and actually arrange to pass her 
whole holiday, more or less in his company, was 
simply disgusting to him ! He found himself wishing 
vehemently that he could be less proud than he was of 
having her for his granddaughter. 

“Valentine will be greatly disappointed,” he re- 
marked after a minute or two. 


HARVEST. 


163 


Rachel went on working at a background vigorously, 
giving it, indeed, rapt attention ; but she did not say 
anything, because about him she had nothing that she 
wished to say. 

“ He had counted so on your going to the Priory,” 
the General went on, quite mournfully. 

“ What a strange thing that he never even told me 
there was such a place,” said she sharply, resenting 
the fault-finding tone in which he spoke. “ I’m sure 
he has been here often enough to tell me the whole of 
the Red Book from one end to the other.” 

General Yandeleur got up to go; her last sharp reply 
had just told him what he most wanted to know — 
or he thought so, which to him was the same thing. 

u Well, my dear, I am very sorry that you thought 
fit to make your arrangements without in any way 
consulting or considering me. Perhaps it is my fault — 
I ought to have spoken to you sooner. At all events, I 
am very sorry.” 

“ And so am I,” said Rachel, touched m a moment by 
his tone. “ But you see when you have made definite 
engagements, especially where work is involved too, 
you must keep to them. But perhaps if you care about 
having us, you could do with us after we get back from 
Cornwall.” 

“ I never stop at the Priory in November,” said the 
old General sadly. “It is a lovely place, but in 
November it would be death to me. I have not been 
there at that time of year for over twenty years. No, 
my dear, if it is a frosty Christmas I will make a party 
for you then, and you shall come and do the honours of 
the old place. But in November I dare not risk a 
day there.” 


164 


HARVEST. 


“ I am so sorry,” said Rachel. 

She could scarcely tell him that she had had an 
instinctive feeling that he would probably want her to 
spend some part of her holidays with him, and that she 
had caught eagerly at the suggestion held out to Mrs. 
Damas by Mr. Pharaoh for a three months’ sojourn in 
Cornwall, because she did not want to find herself in 
the same house as Valentine Harrington — a quiet 
country house, wherein they would of necessity be 
thrown much together, and she would have no reason- 
able excuse for avoiding him. The General therefore, 
knowing nothing of this, went away feeling perfectly sure 
that Rachel had more than a liking for his godson, 
and that Val had not been keen enough about his 
wooing. 

“ Val, my dear lad,” he said when he reached home 
and found Harrington waiting for him in the library, 
“ I have good news for you, and bad. Rachel has made 
all her arrangements for going to Cornwall for three 
months with Mrs. Damas, and — and that painter fellow, 
Pharaoh, is going into the same neighbourhood also.” 

Valentine Harrington got up from his chair and said 
“ Damn ! ” in a perfectly polite and conventional manner. 
“ And which is the good news, sir ? ” he asked, when a 
moment had passed. 

“The good news, my lad,” cried the General, giving 
him a mighty slap on the shoulder, such as made the 
young man wince and the General’s own old bones fairly 
rattle, “ the good news is that our lady-bird is huffed — 
huffed with you, my lad.” 

“Yes, I know that,” muttered Valentine ruefully, 
and he did to his cost, as he reminded himself — “ but 
why ? What makes you think so, sir ? ” 


HARVEST. 


1G5 


u She as good as told me that yon had been there often 
enough to have spoken out long before this,” cried the 
old man in high delight. “ So go in at once, Yal, and 
get the affair settled up, and then we can knock this 
Cornish expedition on the head without the least 
trouble.” 

“You think so, sir?” Val asked rather doubtfully 
“ I’m sure of it,” returned the General promptly.- 
“ Don’t waste any more time — go in and win, else you’ll 
be having this Pharaoh man walking over the course, 
and where will you be then ? ” 

“ Very much out of it,” admitted Valentine 
“You see,” said the General, “ Rachel is just in that 
frame of mind when it takes but little to turn the scale 
one way or the other. Although she is so different to 
me in her ambitions and ’in most of her ways, Rachel 
is my own granddaughter in one respect — she is very 
proud, and damme, sir ! I like her the better for it. I’ve 
wondered more times than once the last few weeks if it 
was really George Yandeleur who had quietly taken the 
facers I’ve had from that girl — regular facers, I tell you, 
and not a back-hander amongst ’em. And I like her 
the better for it. I treated the girl badly and she 
resents it. In spite of everything that I have done or 
can do, she resents it yet; and she’ll hardly own me or 
have me at any price. But, damme, sir, if she’d sat 
quietly down and let me treat her how I liked, I 
shouldn’t have liked her half as well. Ten to one I’d 
have just tried how badly I could behave to her, if only 
to find out how much she would bear. It’s a way 
we men have, and if women only knew their power, they 
would let us see a good deal more of the devil in them 
than they do.” 



CHAPTER XIX 


PLAIN SPEAKING. 


" A wise man reflects before he speaks; a fool speaks, and then 
reflects on what he has uttered.” — D elilb. 

“ Never give way to an assailing enemy.”— B acon. 


HUS urged by his godfather, Valentine Harrington 



-L determined to shilly-shally no longer but to go 
in and speak plainly to Rachel all that was in his mind, 
and the next day being a Saturday, he made himself 
look very spruce and betook himself to South Ken- 
sington Square. 

It was not a very auspicious day, for he found the 
usual crowd in the studio and Rachel sitting on the 
edge of the big platform on which Mrs. Damas’s sitters 
stood or sat for their portraits, and beside her, quite 
close to her in fact, was the rising young painter, Mr. 
Pharaoh. 

Not only were they sitting very near together, but 
they were evidently enjoying a thoroughly interesting 
and apparently confidential chat about something or 
other and, what was not very usual with her, Rachel 
was doing most of the talking, while Mr. Pharaoh, with 
all his soul in his eyes and a broad smile on his lips, 
was listening intently. 


HARVEST. 


167 


The worst of it was that as Valentine Harrington 
stood at the door watching them, he could not hide 
from himself the fact that this Mr. Pharaoh was 
not only great, but was also a very personable young 
man. He had not Harrington’s stature to boast of, 
being under rather than over the middle height, nor 
had he his smart and soldierly gait and bearing ; yet, 
for all that, he was a comely-looking young man, fair- 
haired and ruddy-skinned, with good bluish eyes and 
very good features ; while over all there hung the ex- 
pression and air of a man who was full of fire and in- 
telligence, one who was conscious of having done good 
work and meant to do better. And’ how Valentine 
Harrington loathed him, him and his pictures, his 
name, his — his everything, pen of mine could hardly 
tell. 

Howevei, Re could not stand there by the door 
glowering at Rachel, who by-the-bye had her back 
half turned towards him and had not, he thought, 
Been him come in ; and he did not want to go and 
interrupt their talk just then. But, all the same, he 
moved a little away from the door and spoke to a man 
he knew who, like himself, was standing alone. 

And whilst he was standing there, he saw Mrs. 
Damas turn her head sharply round with an unmis- 
takable frown on her straight brows, just as Franpine 
announced “Major Pottinger.” With the instinct of 
one army man’s desire to look at another army man, 
Harrington turned to the door. “ What a brute,” was 
his mental comment. 

Major Pottinger blundered into the room, a very big 
lopsided person, with straight yellowish hair and a 
very low forehead; with little pig’s eyes and a huge 


168 


HARVEST. 


chin and jaw, a man all collars and cuffs and a great 
many rings, who went up to Mrs. Damas, looked all 
round the room, and said “ Haw, haw ! ” shot his 
linen till the bystanders who did not know him, 
wondered if it was a new kind of conjuring entertain- 
ment, looked all round the room the other way, and said 
“Her — H’er!” shot the linen of the other arm, and 
gracefully presented a hand in a new yellow glove to 
the hostess. 

It was a wonderful performance, and Harrington 
watched it with a kind of disgusted awe, puzzled to 
know in what part of the Service such a man could have 
been long enough to have reached the rank of Major. 
Although he did not know it, that was a question which 
a good many people in and out of the Service asked of 
themselves and of one another, and it was a question 
which had never been satisfactorily answered. 

That he was not a very welcome guest to the brilliant 
hostess, Harrington saw plainly enough from the limp 
hand she gave him and the way in which she looked 
from side to side, anywhere, except at his flat face with 
its little sly twinkling eyes. Then she seemed to make 
some excuse for leaving him, for he bowed and shot out 
his cuffs till his hands almost disappeared from sight, 
and Mrs. Damas flitted away to another part of the 
studio. 

Harrington watched with some curiosity to see what 
the gallant Major would do next, and to his intense 
disgust he saw him, after glaring round, shoot out his 
cuffs again and swagger across to where Rachel was still 
sitting. He fancied that Rachel had seen the big burly 
lumbering figure go across the studio, for, as he 
approached her, she turned still further away from the 


HARVEST. 


169 


general company and nearer to Mr. Pharaoh, and seemed 
to be entirely engrossed in a conversation so interesting 
that she had neither eyes nor ears for anybody else. And 
he fancied too, from the laughter in the painter’s blue 
eyes and his air of suppressed mirth, that he perhaps 
had warned her not to look round. Major Pottinger, 
however, was not a man to be daunted by any show of 
distaste on the part of the lady on whom he thought fit 
to bestow his pestilential attentions. He stopped in 
front of her, struck an attitude, with one leg well out 
before him, and shot out his cuffs again. 

“ Haw — h’er ! HOW-d’you-DO, Miss Dudley ? — haw — 
haw ! ” he remarked, holding out the yellow hand to her. 

Rachel looked up with an air of surprise. 

“Oh, thank you,” she said frigidly ; “I am quite well.” 

“ Delighted, I’m sure,” said the Major in a very loud 
voice. 

For a moment he waited with the yellow hand still 
outstretched for Rachel to lay her’s in it. Rachel, how- 
ever, kept hers still clasped within the other and had 
evidently no intention of moving them so much as a 
single hair’s breadth, so at last the Major flourished 
his cuff out again and began to tug at his moustache. 

“ Delighted, I’m sure, to have the pleasure of meeting 
you again,” he began, still in the storm-at-sea sort of 
voice. 

“ I don’t think,” said Rachel coldly, “ that I ever had 
the honour of speaking to you before.” 

“ Oh, yes — yes. We met here one day early in the 
season. You are Miss Dudley — I am quite sure of it, 
because it was the day before I went off to Yiennah — 
haw ! I — er — go a great deal to Yiennah — and Berlin 
— haw ! Yes — yes — yes ! ” 


170 


HARVEST. 


“I remember you being here perfectly well,” said 
Rachel in an exasperatingly civil voice, “ but you were 
never introduced to me — that I am quite sure of.” 

“ Surely,” she thought — and looked — “ that will have 
the desired effect.” 

But no; the Major spread himself out into an 
attitude of affable explanation. “ Ah — er — excuse me, 
I remember it perfectly. Lady Bardinge did me the 
honour ” 

“ But she couldn’t. I don’t know her,” interrupted 
Rachel, who had had so many denunciations of this man 
hurled at her that she began to get desperate in her 
efforts to be rid of him. 

“No — haw! Yes — you are right. It was the 

Duchess of Pimlico — I remember perfectly.” 

Now Rachel did not know the Duchess of Pimlico 
any more intimately than she knew my Lady Bardinge, 
but she was prevented from saying so by the scrape of 
a violin, which proclaimed that somebody was going to 
play upon that instrument. 

With a sigh of relief Rachel turned her eyes whence 
the sound came, and encountered Harrington’s gaze. 
She smiled instantly, a smile so friendly and so informal 
that hope went up high at once and he felt all in a 
moment fully satisfied with himself and the whole world, 
— even with this blatant and boring Major Pottinger. 
As they were but just behind the piano or, more correctly, 
to one side of it, the irrepressible Major was compelled 
to step a little aside so as to allow Rachel to have a 
view of the player, who was just then the rage in Lon- 
don — one Flip van Oosterzee, a young man from the 
Low Countries, who charmed almost as many people by 
his good-natured dark face and frank genial manners 


HARVEST. 


171 


as he did by his violin, a genuine Strad’, of which he 
was a master. 

To get from between Rachel and Flip Yan Oosterzee, 
who stood sideways to them, Major Pottinger squeezed 
himself in front of the man to whom Harrington had 
been talking and put himself into an attitude calculated 
to attract her attention ; and then the music began. 

How shall I describe it ? A dreamy tender melody 
in a minor key — so dreamy, so tender, so soft, that you 
might have heard a pin drop in the crowded room. 
Even Harrington forgot his doubts and fears as he 
listened, and the gallant Major tugged fiercely at his 
moustache and tried to look as if he understood it. 
From the tender melody the music rose louder and 
louder, swelling higher and higher until the listening 
crowd began to wonder how one man’s hands could draw 
such enchanted sounds from even a genuine Strad’ — 
then all at once the Major created a diversion, or at 
least a sensation, by suddenly shooting out first one cuff 
and then another, contriving to hit Yan Oosterzee on 
the elbow and to send his bow flying over the strings 
with a force that made him jump a couple of feet away 
from where he stood. However, with the instinct of a 
great artist or a true gentleman, or both, the violinist 
picked up the tender melody again and went on as 
much as if nothing had happened as was possible. 

Rachel flung an indignant glance at Harrington, and 
the Major, without having uttered a word of apology or 
regret, took to tugging at his moustache and nodding 
his head at his own thoughts as if he had done some- 
thing remarkably clever. Already Harrington’s hot 
blood was boiling, and that look of Rachel’s did not tend 
to lower it. 


172 


HAKVEST. 


“ Tell that chap to get out of the way,* he said to the 
man in front of him. 

“ Don't like to,” answered the man in a whisper. 

“ Pull him out of the road,” persisted Harrington. 
“If you don’t, I swear I’ll kick him out of the 
house.” 

Thus incited, the more timid man touched tllfe Major 
on the shoulder — “ I am asked to tell you,” he said 
civilly, “ that Mr. Van Oosterzee likes to have more 
room” — in the face of which Major Pottinger had no 
choice but remove himself a yard or so away. 

“ I’m awfully obliged to you,” said Harrington 
presently, when the tender melody had come to an end. 
“ I didn’t want to tell the fellow myself, because I was in 
a devil of a temper and it might have got the better of 
me. But I’ve no notion of seeing a great artist treated 
in that way — no notion at all.” 

“Oh, no — but the fellow’s just capable of making a 
row,” said the man who had proved himself such an 
excellent cat’s-paw. 

“ Oh, I should think so. By-the-bye, what regiment 
was he in ? Do you know ? ” 

“ Haven’t the least idea — nobody was ever able to 
find out,” said the man with a laugh. 

Harrington laughed too and went to speak to Bachel, 
but just as he moved Major Pottinger pushed himself 
past him and bent down to speak to her also. 

“Haw — by-the-way, Miss Dudley,” he began, shooting 
out his left cuff and holding a pencil over it, “I don’t 
quite remember what you said your day at home was ? ” 

“ I have not a day at home,” said Rachel getting up 
from her low seat. 

“Haw — then I suppose I may call any time — er! 


HARVEST. 


173 


Ah ! yes. Lady Cottersham promised to drive me down 
to call on you one day soon but ” 

“ But I don’t happen to know Lady Cottersham,” put 
in Rachel quickly. 

“Oh, yes — she told me she knew you well,” ex- 
plained the Major blandly. And — er — what did you 
say your address was ? ” 

“I did not say anything about it,” said Rachel 
curtly. 

“ Miss Dudley, may I take you to have some tea ? ” 
broke in Harrington at that moment — and Rachel, 
with a sigh of intense relief, said, “ Oh, yes, please do,” 
and took his arm. 

“The brute!” he burst out as they reached the 
entrance hall. “ Such men as that ought to be put out 
of every house they force themselves into.” 

“ I believe he is, every now and then,” she answered. 
“Ever since I have been going out it has been Mrs. 
Damas’s one cry — “ Whatever you do, don't let that 
Major Pottinger get hold of you.” 

“ How did Mrs. Damas manage to ” 

“ Be got hold of,” finished Rachel with a laugh. 
“ Oh, somebody brought him one day, and she has never 
been really rid of him since. Oh, what a relief this is,” 
—and she sank down upon a comfortable lounge and 
Closed her eyes wearily. 

And in the studio at that moment, the Major was 
thinking about Miss Dudley’s strange way of bringing 
a conversation to an end. 

“Queer thing, these celebrities are all alike. No lady 
ever behaves in that way ; but these celebrities are all 
so ghastly common — they’ve got no sort of manners 
at all.” 


174 


HARVEST. 


Meantime, Harrington had got this particular cele- 
brity a cup of tea and a sponge biscuit, and settled 
himself beside her on the sofa to enjoy the golden 
moment which had been so difficult to find. 

“ My darling,” he said, in his low and tender voice, 
M I hate to see you at the mercy of a brute like that. 
Dearest, give me the right to protect you from all the 
world, and I will take care you are never annoyed in 
that way again.” 

“ What do you mean ? ” said she, looking at him with 
startled eyes. “ I don’t ” 

“ I mean that I want you to be my wife, darling — no, 
don’t look at me like that. It is the dearest wish of 
your grandfather’s heart, Rachel — he is almost as 
anxious for it as I am.” 

For a moment Rachel sat silent, biting her lip — then 
she made a movement as if to put her cup down, and 
Harrington took it from her and put it on a table at 
hand. “ Have you nothing to say to me, dearest ? ” he 
asked in his tender voice. 

For a moment Rachel wavered — a vision of a life’s 
love came before her dazzled eyes, she was on the 
point of saying that which he wished her to say, when 
another vision floated through her brain — a vision 
which brought back with the faithfulness of a photo- 
graph, the memory of a dreadful day, when they had 
stood together in a sitting-room at Morley’s Hotel and 
he had broken to her that he did not mean to risk his 
future wealth and comfort by marrying her, when he 
had broken to her a proposal of another kind. 

“ No, I have nothing to say,” she said, with a great 
effort to be calm and collected, to keep her wits about 
her, in fact — “ I have nothing to say. I am very sorry 


HARVEST. 


175 


you have spoken about this again. I thought that you 
understood I said everything that I had to say months 
ago.” 

“ Rachel !” he cried hoarsely, “ do you mean that your 
grandfather’s wishes have no weight with you ? ” 

“ What has my grandfather done for me to make them 
of weight ?” she asked very scornfully. 

“ But is it all over? Do you really reject me?” he 
persisted. 

“Yes,” she answered, very sadly; “it was all over 
then— you killed it.” 

“ Not your love ! I’ll swear that you love me still,” 
he cried. 

“Not my love — no. I don’t know when that will 
die,” she answered, “ perhaps never. Not my love, 
but my trust — my faith.” 

“ And to-day you finally rejeet me ?” he urged, 
hoping to make the hard words too hard for her to 
say. 

“I have nothing else to say,” she said in a low 
voice, and turning went out of the room and straight 
up the stairs into her own bed-chamber, where she 
shut herself in alone. 





CHAPTER XX. 

A LITTLE SUPPER. 

“ The roses of pleasure seldom last long enough to adorn the 
brow of him who plucks them ; and they retain not their sweetness 
after they have lost their beauty.” — B lair. 

“ To fret is only to sow the wind, and that is a seed that will not 
produce a good crop by itself.” — P axton Hood. 

A FEW minutes after Rachel had gone upstairs, 
General Vandeleur made his appearance in the 
studio. He looked round for his granddaughter, but 
could not see her. He did, however, see the valiant 
Major Pottinger elaborately explaining to Mrs. Van 
Hyphen that his dear friend, the Duchess of Pimlico, had 
been accused not long before, in a Society paper, of 
having taken to painting her face, and how as a proof 
of her innocence of any such villainous procedure, she 
had actually sent for her maid, and had told her to 
bring her a sponge and towel, and she had washed 
her face in his presence. 

In unutterable disgust the General stood to listen, 
filled, if the truth be told, with admiration for the clever 
way in which Mrs. Van Hyphen ignored his blunder. 

“ Really,” she said, with admirable carelessness ; 
“ and was anybody else there ? ” 

“No, not a soul, ’pon my word — haw — h’er!” he 
answered. 

“ The Duchess paid you a very high compliment,” 
said Mrs. V an Hyphen, languidly. “ I should hear of a 



HARVEST. 


177 


good many newspaper paragraphs before I should take 
so much trouble for you.” 

“ Oh, the Duchess is very fond of me ; she goes a 
good deal by my opinion,” bawled the Major. “ She’s 
a very dear friend of mine.” 

Mrs. Van Hyphen leaned back in her chair and fanned 
herself indifferently. It was a tall high-backed chair 
of carved oak and was known as “ the throne ” among 
Mrs. Damas’s friends. The Major struck an attitude of 
elegant ease combined with the necessity, always 
present with him, of completing certain arrangements 
connected with his toilet, shooting his linen, and 
tugging at his moustache, till the bystanders wondered 
whether the cuffs would wear out, or the straggling 
moustache be dragged forth by the roots first. 

Behind “ the throne ” stood Mr. Pharaoh, enjoying 
himself immensely, and as the General drew near to 
him, he muttered in a tolerably audible voice, “ H’m — 
Tom Fool knows a good many more people than know 
Tom Fool,” at which General Vandeleur laughed out- 
right and Mrs. Van Hyphen got up in haste to go. 
Somehow or other Mrs. Van Hyphen always betook 
herself away when anything especially funny was said. 
Why ? Oh, how can I presume to say, dear Reader ? 
For reasons probably best known to herself. 

“ Good-bye, dear Mrs. Damas,” she said. “ Yes, I 
must go really,” and then she added something about 
a delightful hour and a dinner party the other side of 
the park. 

“Haw — yes — yes — must go, thanks, Mrs. Damas,” 
shouted the redoubtable Major. “ Dining out, you 
know. Been so long in Viennah and Berlin, every- 
body is asking me to dinner — haw — haw !” and away 


178 


HARVEST. 


he dashed after the unhappy Mrs. Yan Hyphen, who was 
bustling away to her carriage with an energy which 
was the outcome of positive desperation. 

There was quite a rush out of the studio into the 
drawing-room to see which of them would win — that 
is whether Mrs. Yan Hyphen would manage to get in 
and shut the door before he had sorted his hat out from 
among the rest of the hats still left in the entrance. 

“ By Jove, she’s done it,” exclaimed Pharaoh as Mrs. 
Yan Hyphen shut the door with a bang, and the carriage 
rolled away just as Major Pottinger reached the pave- 
ment and stood breathless and disappointed looking 
after it. 

“ Franpine,” cried Mrs. Damas in a sharp whisper to 
th© Frenchwoman who was doing something at the tea- 
table, “ go and shut the front door.” 

“ Certainly, Madame,” said Franpine, who understood 
perfectly. 

“ ’Pon my word, that’s a clever woman,” remarked 
Mr. Pharaoh to the company generally — and then he 
added reflectively, “ I’d like to paint her portrait — I 
never saw anything more cleverly done in my life than 
that.” 

Half-a-dozen of the people nearest to him burst out 
laughing at the idea, and under cover of their fun and 
chattering, the General edged up to Harrington and 
asked him a question. 

“ Where is Rachel ?” he said. 

“ She was here a moment or so ago,” answered 
Harrington, with well-assumed carelessness. 

“ Have you been talking to her at all ?” 

“ Oh, yes. I think she went upstairs just now, said 
Harrington, putting a good face on the matter. 


HARVEST. 


179 


“I see,” said the old man, then turned round to 
Mrs. Damas, who touched him on the arm. “Pardon 
me — I did not hear.” 

“ Will you stop and have supper with us ? ” she said 
pleasantly. “Quite informally you know, but I shall 
be charmed if you will.” 

“ I shall be delighted,” said the old General gallantly. 

“ And Mr. Harrington ? ” said Mrs. Damas, looking 
past him at Valentine. 

Now Harrington, after the blow Rachel had dealt 
him by refusing to marry him, would fain have got out 
of accepting the invitation if he could. He hummed and 
ah’d and stammered, until at last the General took the 
matter out of his hands entirely by answering for him. 

“ Of course you can, my dear lad,” he said testily. 
“ You cannot be engaged, for you were going to dine 
quietly with me to-night. What? Oh, Mrs. Damas 
would not ask you if she did not want you. He will be 
delighted Mrs. Damas, delighted ! And, by the bye, 
Val, my dear lad,” he went on, not giving Harrington 
time to utter a single word, “just go out and tell Jervis 
to go back and let them know at Portland Place that we 
are not coming back to dinner, and he need not come 
back for us — we’ll take a cab home.” 

“ Very well, sir,” said Harrington, resigning himself 
to his fate. 

He went out obediently, feeling that it really was fate. 
He had tried, honestly tried, to leave, according to 
to Rachel’s evident desire, but fate, in the persons of 
Mrs. Damas and his godfather, had been too strong for 
him and he had not been given free choice in the matter. 
So he went out and sent his godfather’s carriage home 
with the message for Jones that they were not coming 

M Z 


180 


HARVEST. 


back to dinner. And then he went back into the house 
feeling more at ease and light of heart, for it was just 
possible that he might catch Rachel’s heart in the re- 
bound from her anger, and that after all everything 
might at last come right. 

But that hope died almost at its birth, for at half-past 
seven Rachel came down again, in obedience to a summons 
from Mrs. Damas, and the blank look of consternation 
which swept across her face when she saw him among 
those who were remaining to supper was enough in 
itself to kill any new and tender hope that might have 
been born that evening in his heart But, nevertheless, 
he did not submit to leaving her in ignorance of his 
effort not to intrude upon her further. 

“ Rachel,” he said simply, going straight up to her 
and speaking in a voice that could reach no ear but hers, 
“ after what you said to me just now, I hope you don’t 
think me such a brute as to force myself upon your 
company. I assure you I tried hard to get away, but 
I was engaged to dine with the General to-night and 
he simply put me in a hole by accepting for himself 
and me too. I couldn’t help myself. Under any other 
circumstances in the world I would not have stopped.” 

Rachel bit her lip and turned her face towards him 
- — when he saw that she was much paler than usual. 

“ Never mind,” she said, with an effort — “ it does 
not hurt me to have you stop.” 

“ I know that you would be more comfortable if I 
didn’t,” he went on, vexedly. “ But without giving 
you away to everybody here, what excuse could I 
make ?” 

“ None,” she said. The instinct of hospitality was 
very strong in her ; she felt that it was precisely as he 


HARVEST. 


181 


had said, that he had been regularly trapped into 
accepting Mrs. Damas’s invitation, and she was for the 
moment more sorry for his discomfort than she was 
conscious of her own pain. 

“ Don’t speak like that about it,” she said, with a 
ghost of a smile. “ You must know that you are not 
loathesome to me.” 

Under cover of a screen which half hid them from 
view, Harrington caught her hand in a fierce grip. 

“ On the contrary,” said Rachel, with a sharp sob 
catching her breath — “ your presence is always a 
pleasure to me, even though — though I wish that it 
were not so.” 

Harrington dropped her hand instantly — and the 
tender flower of hope which had sprung up anew within 
his heart, withered and died. 

There were not above a dozen staying to supper, and 
Rachel found herself put between Harrington and Mr. 
Pharaoh. 

Mr. Pharaoh, indeed, took care that he got next to 
her, and as Mrs. Damas quite unsuspiciously said — “Mr. 
Harrington, will you take Miss Dudley ?” Valentine 
had no choice but to be on the other side. 

And he was very unhappy ; for even after what 
Rachel had said to him that afternoon and when she 
found he was remaining to supper, if she had shown 
some signs of annoyance at his near presence to her, 
if she had talked more to Mr. Pharaoh than to him, he 
would even yet have had some hope. But although 
Mr. Pharaoh tried very hard to monopolise her 
attention and her conversation, and gave her every 
excuse for utterly neglecting Harrington, Rachel never 
attempted to do so. She talked to him calmly and 


182 


HARVEST. 


quietly — and by what an effort God and herself only 
knew ; Harrington never — as if he had been some 
unusually important guest whom it was her duty to 
entertain. She talked of theatres and plays, of 
Irving’s Robert Macaire and Ellen Terry’s Ellaline ; 
she talked about the difference between Beerbohm 
Tree in the Pompadour and Beerbohm Tree as Grin- 
goire ; then she wandered on to the pictures and the 
exhibitions, and at last they got on to politics, and 
gravely and seriously they discussed the domestic 
virtues of Mr. Gladstone, while their hearts were 
breaking ! And then, when they all adjourned to the 
studio and cigarettes were the order of the day, they 
fell apart and made talk no more, nor even spoke to each 
other until Harrington went to bid her good-night; 
good-night and good-bye. 

“ Something has happened,” said the General as they 
turned the comer of the square. 

“ Yes,” said Harrington quietly. 

“Well ?” eagerly. “Well, my dear lad, is it all right ?” 

“ I’m afraid not, sir,” said Harrington, biting his lip 
and trying hard to seem cool and unconcerned. “ Miss 
Potver refused me definitely this afternoon.” 

“ What ? ” said the General, scarcely believing his own 
ears. 

“ You were rather out of it, sir, in accepting for me,” 
Harrington went on. “ Of course you did not know, but 
you were a little out of it. It made it awkward for us 
both — for she had just refused me when you arrived.” 

General Yandeleur sat back in the cab and looked hard 
at his godson by the light of the flickering little lamp. 

“ Rachel has refused you !” he said incredulously. 

“ Yes, refused me,” answered Harrington unsteadily. 


HARVEST. 


183 


“ My dear lad, you must have bungled the matter 
somehow,” he persisted. * 

“ I am afraid that is so, sir,” Harrington admitted. 

<c I could swear the girl likes you,” cried the General 
vexedly. 

So could Harrington, but he could hardly, under the 
circumstances, say so. There was a moment’s awkward 
pause — then with a shrug of his shoulders, and an ail 
of indifference which he was far from feeling, he 
answered, “ Well, sir, I thought so too — but, of course, 
the lady knows best about it ; and I think, if you 
don’t mind, I’ll get out here and go home. This is my 
nearest point. To tell you the truth, this kind of thing 
is rather a new sensation to me, and I don’t much like 
it. I want to be alone to think over it a bit.” 

“ All right — good night, my dear lad,” returned the 
General. 

Valentine thrust the trap door open with his stick. 
“Here, let me out, cabby?” he said. 

He got out, with a “ good night ” to the General as he 
did so ; and the old man leant forward just as 
Harrington reached the ground. 

“I daresay it will all come right, Val,” he said, 
soothingly. “ Such matters often do. Anyway, you 
shall not be the one to suffer by it.” 

“ Don’t say that, sir,” he answered — then stepped 
back and signed to the cabman to drive on. 

“ I shall always have to suffer for it,” he said out 
aloud to the summer night — and then he gave a great 
sigh and turned away towards his chambers (for when 
he left the Service the General had insisted on his setting 
up rooms of his own, that he might be perfectly 
independent) 


184 


HARVEST. 


Meantime the General was fast spinning towards 
Portland Place, and he was in what his servant Jones 
invariably described as “ a boiling passion.” 

“ Upon my soul,” he exclaimed to the soft night air, 
<l if I find the hussy has been playing fast and loose 
with him, and making an ass of me — I’ll — I’ll cut her 
off with a shilling, and — and, by George, he shall 
marry the other one l” 





CHAPTER XXI. 

THE WISDOM OF AGE. 

“ Be sure that nothing destroyeth authority so much as the 
unequal and untimely interchange of power carried too far, and 
relaxed too much.” — B acon. 

“ While there’s life there’s hope, and hope is by the nature of it 
intent on to-morrow.” — F bancis La cox. 

A T this time, partly for the sake of practice and 
partly because she did nob feel equal to starting 
another picture, Rachel was occupied in painting a 
portrait of herself. And although she had at first in- 
tended only to make a mere sketch, with the idea of 
giving it to Mrs. Damas to set in a corner of the big 
studio, no sooner did she find herself fairly at work 
than her instinct of thoroughness began to assert itself, 
and, before she knew what she was about, she had the 
vision of a carefully-finished picture in her mind. 

At this time it was rapidly approaching completion— 
a full-length figure of herself in a soft white silken 
gown, without relief of any kind, except her great gray 
eyes and fair hair showing up well against a curtain of 
crimson plush. 

When General Yandeleur, about twelve o’clock the 
next day, was shown into the studio, Rachel was there, 
working alone, Mrs. Damas having just gone out on 
important business. She looked up as he entered and 
put down her palette and brushes, and looked critically 
at her hand before she hel<l it out to him. 


186 


HARVEST. 


“ It is quite clean,” she said, with a desperate effort 
to be cheerful. “ You know, General Yandeleur, we 
are not supposed to receive visitors during working 
hours. You are the only one for whom Mrs. Damas 
relaxes a very rigid rule.” 

The old man took her hand in his and held it there 
in a close grasp, while his fierce angry old eyes scanned 
her face keenly. 

“ Rachel!” he said — “ I have come to know what it 
all means.” 

u I — I don’t understand you,” she stammered, trying 
to draw her hand away from his. 

“ Oh, yes, I think you do,” he said quietly, very 
quietly considering the horrible temper he had been in 
since the previous night. “ Why did you send my dear 
lad away as you did yesterday ?” 

“ Did he — did he — ,” and then she stopped short and 
stood looking at him, asking him a question plainly 
with her great lovely eyes. 

“ Yes, he told me about it,” the old man said simply. 
“ I asked him.” 

“And he told you — what?” She was afraid, from 
her grandfather’s manner, that Harrington had been led 
into making a clean breast of everything — of telling 
him exactly why she had rejected him. 

“ He told me that you refused him definitely.” 

Rachel breathed freely again ; the General mistook 
the long breath for a sigh. It was like a good many 
other mistakes that the old man had made during the 
course of his not uneventful life. 

“ And I want to know,” he went on, “ why you re- 
fused him ?” 

*' I cannot tell you that,” she answered quickly 


HARVEST. 


187 


“You cannot tell me,” incredulously — “and why 
not?” 

“ I did refuse him — that is enough,” she answered, 
with dignity. 

“ It is not enough for me,” returned the General in 
a voice which, as Jones could have warned her, be- 
tokened that his patience was fast leaving him. “ It is my 
right to hear your reason, and I insist upon hearing it.” 

Rachel’s desire to soften the pain she had given him 
faded away, and she seemed to freeze instantly. 

“ I question your right, sir,” she said, stepping back 
from where she stood. “You can have no possible right 
over my private affairs — they concern me, and me alone. 
Even if you had been the grandfather which you have 
not been to me, you would still have no right to ask me 
such a question, or to insist upon an answer which I 
am not willing to give. I say to you that I have 
declined the honour which Mr. Harrington has offered 
me, and I have no more to say about it.” 

By this the old man knew that it was useless to try 
to scold or frighten her into submission, so he tried 
another way of getting the information he wanted. 

“Rachel,” he said, “will you look me in the face 
and tell me that you have not done this thing because 
you knew that I wished it ?” 

“But why should I do so ?” she cried in amazement. 

“ Because, as you truly said just now, I have not been 
the grandfather to you that I might have been.” 

“ Upon my sacred word of honour,” said Rachel, 
holding out her hand to him at once, “ such an un- 
worthy thought never entered my mind for a moment. 

The old General bent down and kissed her hand 
tenderly. 


183 


HARVEST. 


“My dear,” lie said persuasively, “I want you to 
marry my dear lad.” 

“I’m very sorry,” she murmured, shaking her head 
resolutely. 

“ If I did not feel sure that you like him — that you 
like him more than any other man you know, my dear 
— I should neither wish it nor ask it. But I know that 
you do.” 

Rachel said nothing, because on that subject she had 
nothing to say; but she shook her head again as 
resolutely as before. 

“ If you will tell me that you don’t like him,” the old 
man urged, “ I’ll never speak of the matter to you 
again.” 

“ I cannot tell you that,” said Rachel, suddenly raising 
her eyes and looking straight at him, “ but I am not 
going to marry him, so whether I like him or not is a 
matter of no moment.” 

For an instant General Yandeleur was strongly 
tempted to go off into a fit of rage ; to exclaim that if 
she did not do his bidding, and fall in with his wishes, 
he would not only never see her again but he would 
also disinherit her! However, the certainty of the 
knowledge that she would quietly acquiesce in such a 
decision and also would probably never trouble herself 
even to think about him again, kept him from this 
and made him calm ; and the fact of his keeping calm 
made him better able to argue his case with her. 

“ He is such a dear lad, Rachel,” he said mournfully, 
“so generous and so manly; and he is kind-hearted 
and good, too, my dear — why, Rachel — Rachel — is it 
that there is someone else ? ” he burst out, as a new 
and unwelcome thought flashed upon him. 


HARVEST 


189 


“Nobody else,” answered Rachel, so promptly that 
he dismissed the thought at once. 

“ He is heart-broken,” he went on. 

Rachel began to be terribly afraid that if he went 
on much longer she would not be able to keep the 
tears out of her eyes. 

The old man saw that she was trembling, and fancied 
that she was wavering — “It will be the ruin of his 
life,” he urged, “ and — although I don’t expect that 
to have much weight with you — it is the dearest wish 
of my heart.” 

“ You make it very hard for me,” she broke out at last. 

“ I want to make it hard for you, my dear,” he said, 
eagerly ; “I want to make it so hard that you will do 
what I wish and what my poor lad asks. I brought 
him up, Rachel, and though you are my own grand- 
daughter and he is no ” 

“I know all that you are going to say,” she cried, 
glad to seize the chance of speaking plainly — “ I know. 
You mean, by-and-bye — after a very long time, I hope — 
he is to be your heir. You think that I am your own 
granddaughter and he is no relation to you, and that 
it is all his by right. So it is. Please don’t leave me 
a penny, I don’t want it. I am happier, far, far 
happier, working for myself. It is good for me to do 
it. But don’t hesitate to leave Yal everything — I 
would infinitely rather that he had it than I.” 

She grew quite excited as she spoke, and laid her 
pretty slender hands persuasively upon his arm. He 
stood looking down upon her with a puzzled expression. 

“My dear,” he said after a moment, “ shall I tell 
you something?” 

« Yes.” 


190 


HARVEST. 


“I don’t know what is working in your mind, or 
whether Yal has offended you or not, but you love him ? 
Yes, with all your heart and soul ! I am sure of it.” 

Eachel let her hands fall from his arm and then 
stood looking at him for a moment or so; and then 
she suddenly dismayed him utterly by running back 
to the large couch in the corner, flinging herself 
down among the cushions in an agony of tears. 

In spite of his being by nature and habit alike an 
autocrat and a martinet, the old General’s first impulse 
was a gallant one, and he moved a step towards her as 
if to try to comfort her. Then he stopped short and 
stood looking at her for a moment, shaking his head. 

“ Better leave her for a bit — she will cry till that 
crank in her mind against marrying him gets fairly 
washed out of it,” he thought ; and then he went softly 
out of the studio, and closed the door gently behind 

him. 




CHAPTER XXII. 

TIIE WISDOM OF YOUTH. 

m True love can no more be diminished by showers of evil-hap 
than flowers are marred by timely rain.” — Sir Philip Sidney. 

T HE General drove straight along the Cromwell Road 
to Valentine Harrington’s chambers in Curzon 
Street ; but his godson was not at home. 

General Vandeleur bent oyer the side of his phaeton 
and asked when Mr. Harrington was expected back. 
Tho respectable ex-butler who let out that particular 
house to unmarried gentlemen for a consideration replied 
that he did not know — Mr. Harrington had breakfasted 
that morning at his chambers, had dressed early, and had 
gone out saying that he should probably lunch at his 
club. Beyond this remark the ex-butler did not 
remember that Mr. Harrington had said anything. 

The General hum’d and ah’d, and snorted with vexa- 
tion, but he could not very well swear at the respectable 
person then standing on the pavement, so he had to 
content himself by scribbling an urgent message on a 
card, and requesting the respectable person not to lose 
an instant’s delay m giving it to Mr. Harrington when 
he returned to his chambers. 

“ Certainly, sir — I will attend to it myself,” the re- 
spectable person said with a profound bow. He had an 
admirable manner, but the bow was rather too profound 



192 


HARVEST. 


for the General’s irritated nerves, and he felt that it 
would be the greatest relief in the whole world to get down 
and kick him soundly. That, however, was impossible — 
even General Yandeleur had to have some sort of an 
excuse for kicking a man, and just then he did not 
happen to have one of any kind. So, as a sort of 
apology to himself for having the feeling, he lifted his 
right elbow about an inch and turned the horses sharply 
round. 

“ I’ve a good mind to run home and see if. he has 
been round,” he thought. 

No sooner thought than done ; in a few minutes he 
was at his own door, but Mr. Harrington had not 
shown himself there that morning. 

“ If he comes,” he said to Jones, “ tell him I shall be 
in to lunch, and that he is to wait for me. I want to 
see him particularly — say on most important business ” 

“ Very good, sir,” returned Jones solemnly. 

General Yandeleur after that drove round to his god- 
son’s club and left another card, bearing an urgent 
message there also, as he did not find Yalentine him- 
self. If he had only known it at that moment 
Harrington was sitting under the trees in the Park 
trying to console himself for the blow which had fallen 
upon him the previous day by chatting — flirting if you 
will — with Lady Bardinge’s little pert-nosed, red- 
haired daughter. It was but poor consolation ; yet, as 
all the world knows, any consolation is better than 
none, and Harrington was very miserable. 

He had not meant to go out into society that day ; he 
told himself that he was heartily sick of it, and that he 
should wire at once to Ellingham and go out by the 
midnight boat to Rotterdam and on to Norway to join 


HARVEST. 


193 


him in that salmon river of which he had drawn such 
tempting pictures. Yes, he would leave London that 
very day. 

But, somehow, while he was just trying to dazzle 
himself with the delights of Norwegian salmon-fishing, 
he happened, by way of preventing anyone coming to 
talk to him, to pick up a book which was lying on the 
table close beside him — a volume of Thackeray ; and 
while seeming to read and in reality thinking, his eyes 
fell upon these words, and his attention was attracted — 

“ The world is a looking-glass, and gives back to every man the 
reflection of his own face. Frown on it, and it will in turn look 
sourly on you; laugh at it ’and with it, and it is a jolly kind 
companion.” 

He read the lines over two or three times, then he 
glanced round the luxurious room, looked out at the 
brilliant sunshine streaming over the thronged and 
busy street, and finally threw the book back on the 
table and got up from his chair. 

“ After all,” he said to himself, “ Rachel Power is not 
the only woman in the world, and if she were, that’s no 
reason why I should make myself wretched because 
she’s as hard as a flint and as unbending as steel. No, 
by Jove ! that it is not. I’ll go out and look round the 
Park, and by Jove ! I’ll see if there isn’t some balm left 
in Gilead after all.” 

No sooner said than done. He sauntered up Pall 
Mall and into St. James’ Street, stopped at a flower 
shop in Piccadilly and bought himself a gardenia for 
his coat, and finally arrived in the Park just as Lady 
Bardinge entered into an animated conversation with 
a friend in the shape of a stately old dowager, and 
little Miss Dulcie, in a white frock all frills and 

N 


194 


HARVEST. 


emoroidery fresh and clean, plentifully decked with 
pale green ribbons, was looking forlornly round in the 
hope of seeing somebody who would make the morning 
pleasant ; and forthwith Harrington sat down beside 
the young lady, and they simultaneously set to work 
with such vigour to make things pleasant for one 
another that it was quite a beautiful sight to see them. 

But no paradise lasts long without its serpent. 
Nor did theirs ! Before Harrington had been sitting 
there a quarter-of-an-hour, the ungainly figure of one 
Major Pottinger loomed in the distance, alone and 
advancing with that peculiar gait which in a wild 
beast is called “prowling.” “Oh, here’s that horrid 
Major Pottinger,” cried little Miss Dulcie, in quite a 
scared tone. 

Lady Bardinge’s eagle eye had, however, already 
discerned the enemy. “Mr. Harrington,” she said, 
authoritatively and yet with a pleading ring which 
fairly touched Valentine, “ do me a favour. Take my 

daughter to see the flowers, the horses — anything to ” 

she broke off short and looked at him, and Harrington 
hastened to let her see that he understood. 

“ Certainly, Lady Bardinge ; I shall be charmed,” 
he said, getting up from his chair at once. “ Shall we 
go this way ? ” he added to Dulcie. 

“ Oh, yes,” said she, starting off at a good brisk pace. 
“ Anywhere to get out of that dreadful man’s way. Do 
you know he really frightens me ? Yes, really. If it 
were not for Mamma — but Mamma always knows what 
to do.” 

“ That’s a very good thing for you ; the fellow’s an 
awful brute,” answered Harrington. “ But we’re all 
right now.” 


HARVEST. 195 

It was quite true — Lady Bardinge was usually equal 
to any emergency. She was in this case. 

It happened that the redoubtable Major Pottinger 
was possessed also of an eagle eye, in common with her 
ladyship, and when he descried little Miss Dulcie, whom 
he was by way of admiring, he quickened his pace and 
began to crowd on all sail — that is to say, he brought 
well to the front all his attractions of clean lingerie and 
new gloves. Then when he saw the lady turn off with 
her cavalier, and go hastily in the direction of the Ride, 
he quickened his pace yet more and fairly gave chase. 

But her ladyship was one too many for him. She was 
a person of commanding presence, with a prominent 
nose, a receding chin, a large bust, and that kind of 
high-pitched yet mellow voice which betokens familiar 
intercourse with the highest society. And when Major 
Pottinger got within a couple of yards of where she sat, 
she put out an exceedingly long parasol and stopped 
him. “How do you do, Major Pottinger?” she said in 
such bland and gracious tones that the Major im- 
mediately made a display of purple and fine linen such 
as would not have ill become a blushing school-girl or 
the window of a baby-linen shop — “I have not seen 
you for a long time.” 

It was true enough. She might have seen him many 
a time if she would, but it did not just then suit her 
purpose to say so. 

“ H’er — her,” stammered the Major. u The fact ia 
I’ve been a good deal in Yiennah lately — I haven’t had 
time to look my friends up yet. H’er — h’er — but I shall 
be delighted to come and pay my respects to you,” — 
and here the linen came to the front again, as if silently 
assuring Lady Bardinge that it was of the most imma- 

M 2 


196 


HARVEST. 


culate description and quite worthy of being invited to 
her house. “Haw — h’er — what day did you say you 
were at home, Lady Bardinge ?” 

“ I did not say I was at home any day,” said Lady 
Bardinge blandly. “ I had my last reception a month 
ago, and we go to our place in the country the day 
after to-morrow. Next season? Oh, I never make 
engagements or promises from one season to another. 
We may all be dead before then. Must you go ? Ah ! — ■ 
good-bye — a pleasant autumn to you.” 

u Yes,” she went on, as the Major lumbered off, “ he 
is a dreadful person, but I think I gave them time to 
get away.” 

So effectually did they get away that Harrington 
went home with them to lunch and then to a friendly 
dinner at the Welcome Club, and finally reached his 
chambers just before midnight, when, with a solemn face, 
the respectable ex-butler handed him General Yandeleur’s 
card bearing this urgent message — 

“ Important news. Come to me at once.” 




CHAPTER XXIII. 

THE HARVEST. 

** The old wound, if stricken, is the sorest ; 

The old hope is hardest to be lost.” 

— Elizabeth Barratt Browning*. 

“ 73 ACHEL, my child,” said Mrs. Damas the next 
ll morning as they sat at breakfast, “you look 
very pale.” 

That was not wonderful, considering that Rachel 
had not closed an eye during the long hot night-^rbut 
she said nothing about it, only that she had rather a 
headache. 

“ Take my advice,” said Mrs. Damas briskly, “ keep 
yourself quiet this morning, and simply do nothing.” 

“ Oh, I cannot shirk the class,” returned Rachel, who 
had made herself of great use to her friend, who had 
just started an outside studio, to her own comfort and 
that of everyone else in the house in South Kensing- 
ton Square. 

“ Let the class take care of itself,” cried Mrs. Damas 
with a pleasant laugh. “ Surely you’ve not got such 
a high and mighty opinion of yourself as to think we 
can’t scramble on without you.” 

“ Well, I hardly thought that,” Rachel replied, laugh- 
ing also ; “ only, as you know, Dorothy, I hate giving in.” 

“ So do I,” said Mrs. Damas heartily ; “ but it’s best 
not to fight against a headache, which is only another 
name for loss of nerve-power. 



198 


HARVEST. 


Punctually to her time for being at her studio, Mrs. 
Damas departed and Rachel was left alone. With her 
an idle morning had come to be so rare that she 
couldn’t easily settle down to doing nothing. She sat 
down, obedient to the orders she received, and tried to 
close her eyes, but a man in the street began to play 
a barrel-organ, and with an exclamation of disgust 
she flew into the studio and shut the door behind her. 
Even there she could plainly hear the cracked and 
discordant strains — 

“ Wait till the clouds roll by, Jennie, 

Wait till the clouds roll by.” 

Peace was out of the question. She wandered 
restlessly about, took up her brushes and put a touch 
or two to the picture of herself, threw them down 
again, and finally dropped into a big chair, thinking 
over all that the old General had said the previous 
day. While she was still sitting there, lost in thought 
and yet full of a resolution to act according to the 
dictates of her head rather than her heart, the door 
was pushed very gently open and Harrington came in. 
Rachel did not hear him, so did not move 

“ Rachel,” he said softly. 

She sprang up from her chair and faced him. 

“ Why have you come ?” she cried, for she saw from 
the radiance and joy upon his face that something had 
happened. 

He crossed the studio to her. “ The General sent for 
me — sent me to you. He said that he had seen you, 
and that all was right,” he said eagerly. “Oh, Rachel! 
my love, my love, you have been hard upon me; just, 
I dare say, but very hard. And now that I have learned 
my lesson thoroughly, you are going to be kind to me, 


HARVEST. 


199 


are you not ? Why — Rachel — you don’t — you cannot 
mean that he was wrong — oh ! no, no, you couldn’t 
send me away again — you couldn’t.” 

“ The General came here,” she said in a voice scarcely 
above a whisper, “ and he pleaded your cause as well 
as if it had been his own. I could say nothing — 
nothing. He believes in you — he said that you were 
brave and frank and true — and — good ! And what 
could I do but let him say aught that he pleased and 
answer nothing ?” 

All the radiance had faded out of his handsome face, 
and it grew as pale and full of pain as her own. 

“ Well ?” he asked — “ well ?” 

“ He would not let me say a word, would not believe 
that I have made up my mind not to marry you. He 
wishes It, and what he wishes he believes will come to 
pass. But I never said one word that could justify him 
in sending you here — not one word.” 

“ Do you mean that it is all no good, that you are 
still holding out against me ? ” he gasped. 

“ I shall always hold out against you,” she answered. 

“ Oh, Rachel, how hard you are upon me,” he cried. 
“ How unforgiving to me.” 

11 1 forgave you long ago,” Rachel said simply. “ But 
forgiveness does not undo what is past and beyond 
alteration. Wdien you have broken a beautiful vase, 
you may be forgiven for it, but the forgiveness does not 
make the vase whole again. It is just so with you and 
me _y 0U broke tke vase of my faith in you, and though 
I forgive you freely and fully, the damage remains just 
the same. Oh! don’t you think, she went on passion- 
ately, “that I would if I could— don’t you see and know 
that I love you still dearly ? And yet if I were to marry 


200 


HARVEST. 


you, I know as well as I know that we two are standing 
here now, that after a very little while we should be 
further apart than if the whole world were between us.*' 

“ I should like to run the risk of that, darling,” he 
said eagerly. 

“No — I dare not do that, I dare not. I should begin 
by loving you, more perhaps than I have ever done — but 
I should never trust you, never. I should always be 
suspicious of what I dreaded would happen — I should 
see a wrong motive in everything that you said, in 
everything that you did. I should grow suspicious — you 
impatient. I wretched, perhaps even jealous — you — 
oh ! don’t let us talk about it. It can never come to pass. 
I tell you I would give half my life and all my fame to 
be able to believe in you as I did — before that awful day 
when you asked me to — to — become your mistress.” 

“ But Rachel, dearest, is it nothing that I saw my 
folly and repented of it ?” 

“When you found that it had not won what you 
wished,” she said significantly. “But if I had been 
weak — where should I be now ? It is not your fault that 
I am Ray Dudley, the painter whom all the world is 
running after ; if it depended upon you alone, I should 
only be General Vandeleur’s outcast granddaughter.” 

“ Perhaps so — I am willing and ready to acknowledge 
myself utterly and absolutely wrong,” he said quickly. 
“You cannot blame me more than I blame myself — that 
is impossible. I suppose it is useless my stopping here 
to argue about the matter if you are so obdurate ; so I 
will go — but remember, Rachel, if you send me away 
now, it shall be for the last time ” 

“ Yes, I know,” she murmured faintly — “ I would 
rather that you went at once.” 


HARVEST. 


201 


Harrington began to feel less humble and repentant, 
and a great deal more angry — as long as there was 
anything to be gained by abasing himself, he could and 
under the circumstances cheerfully would grovel in 
dust and ashes and clothe himself in sackcloth ; but as 
he found that there was nothing to be gained by it, his 
not very meek nature revolted and he became angry 
and rather defiant. 

“ If you send me away now, Rachel, it is for the last 
time, remember. I shall never seek you out again — 
and if I go headlong to the devil, you will always bear 
in mind, I hope, that it is your doing.” 

u My doing !” she echoed. 

“Yes — your doing,” he repeated fiercely. “In 
these days a man needs a good woman to keep him 
straight and stand between him and the world — I shall 
never try to marry any woman now. You could have 
done anything that you liked with me---! have always 
been like wax in your hands. Now it is all over — and 
when I go out of this, hopeless and wretched, with 
nothing to live for, nothing to keep me straight, I 
shall go headlong to perdition as fast as General 
Yandeleur’s liberal allowance will take me. The 
quicker I go to the devil the better I shall be pleased ; 
and do you always bear in mind that it was you 
who sent me there.” 

He turned as if to go, but Rachel, feeling strong and 
like herself again, began to speak, and fairly held him 
prisoner by the great scorn which thrilled her voice and 
blazed out of her big eyes. 

“You come here,” she said — “you! a man, a lord of 
creation — and you threaten me, a weak woman, with 
youi destruction— and why? Because you were not 


202 


HARVEST. 


able to accomplish mine ! I am ashamed of you, Valen- 
tine Harrington — more, I am ashamed of myself for 
having loved you. And I tell you that if when you 
leave me to-day, you deliberately cast yourself headlong 
to your ruin, the sin will not rest upon my head but on 
your own. You are not a child or a weak boy who does 
not know right from wrong — but a man in the very 
flower of your life. You come here and ask me to give 
my whole life into your keeping, you a man who can 
actually threaten me with your eternal destruction — 
oh, for shame, for shame !” 

She paused for a moment, and he stood looking at 
her with his angry eyes shining from his white strained 
handsome face ; but he did not speak. 

“If I have been hard upon you,” she went on, 
“ remember that I have been equally hard upon myself. 
And I think, instead of speaking to me as you have 
done, you might feel some little gratitude to me for 
having borne many hard words from General Yandeleur 
for your sake. Remember I need not have borne them. 
I had only to speak to justify myself to him.” 

“ To speak ? About what ?” he cried. 

“ I had only to tell General Vandeleur of your 
engagement to me.” 

“ I was never engaged to you,” he blurted out. 

Rachel looked at him incredulously for a moment, 
then a light seemed to dawn upon her. 

“ Now that I come to think of it,” she said slowly, 
“ you were but too careful never to say one word to me 
which I could legally construe into a proposal of 
marriage. I was alone in the world, poor, almost 
nameless, at least unknown, when you met me at 
Bombay. And you — you only told me that you loved 


HARVEST 


203 


me — you did not ask me to marry you ! Yes, I see it 
all now. I see — I see ! It behoves a man of honour 
to be very careful not to say one word which he may 
have to break in the letter, though he may ruin a 
woman’s whole life and break her heart quite consis- 
tently with every requirement of honour! Yes, I see! 
And all this time I have been thinking too well of you 
— I thought that it was all real until your godfather 
began to put pressure upon you.” 

“ Rachel, I assure you,” he began, “ you take a wrong 
view of all this. I ■” 

“ Stay,” she said, with great dignity. “ I want to 
hear no more of your excuses. It was just this — love 
in one scale, money in the other, and money weighed 
the most. Let us say no more, for if we talk till crack 
of doom we shall think no differently. I have only one 
other thing to say. It is, let this be the last discussion be- 
tween us on this subject. Let us close the book for ever-^ 
and mind, if you or my grandfather ever open it again, I 
shall have no choice but to justify myself to him. I shall 
not like doing it, but I shall not be able to help myself.” 
“ I don’t understand you,” he said defiantly. 

“ Don’t you ? I think it is very clear,” she answered. 
“ Simply that I shall have to tell my grandfather why I 
refuse to become your wife. For all the rest, I have done.” 

“You would tell the General ” 

u Not willingly. I have taken the blame up till now, 
because I wish you to be as you have been all your life, 
his heir. I would rather receive no mors^y from him 
whatever, for I have no right to it. I told him so the 
other day — yesterday — this morning — what am I say- 
ing ? I mean when he was here last. I begged him to 
make no change.” 


204 


HARVEST. 


u And that is all you have to say to me?” he said, 
roughly. 

“ That is all.” 

“ Very well — good-bye, Rachel.” 

“ Good-bye, Valentine,” she answered. 

For one wild mad moment he stood looking fixedly 
at her, as if he was taking his farewell of her for. ever ; 
then he turned on his heel abruptly and went quickly 
out of the room. 

Rachel took up her palette and brushes again ; she 
was so dazed with the pain of acting up to her resolu- 
tion that she could see neither the canvas nor the 
figure of herself upon which she had been at work when 
he came in. Nevertheless she painted blindly on for 
a few minutes, until indeed she heard the closing of the 
hall-door, which told her that Harrington was gone and 
that the romance of her life had come to an end for ever. 

Then she flung down her palette and brushes and ran 
to the window to see him go — but, alas, the beautiful 
stained glass which filled the quaint Gothic window hid 
him from her sight and she could only discern a form, 
a shadow rather, pass along the pavement and disappear 
into the blaze of glory which flooded the street. 

“ So it is all over,” she -cried. “ I have been true to 
myself, but oh, my God ! how I love him still — how I 
love him still !” 

She turned back to the picture again and went on 
painting with a vague kind of feeling that her work 
was all that she had left to live for, that in her work 
was her only chance of consolation. In truth, she was 
hurt, far more bitterly hurt than she had ever been 
before. Harrington’s injudicious admission that he 
had been careful, during that happy homeward voyage, 


HARVEST. 


205 


not to actually engage himself to her, had done more to 
set her apart from him than everything which had gone 
before. She was wounded to the very quick, stung to 
the lowest depths of her heart, trembling still with the 
shame and the pain of it. 

And yet she went on painting — washing her brushes 
out regularly enough in her saucer of turpentine, mix- 
ing her colours sensibly, looking at her reflection in the 
large glass, and then putting what she saw there on 
the canvas ; and yet, all like a girl in a dream. 

After half-an-hour or so she found the effort too much, 
that her head was beginning to reel and her senses to 
feel numbed and dull ; then she put her palette down 
again and threw herself into a deep chair — not because 
she wanted to be idle and think, but solely because she 
was too much unnerved and shaken to be able to stand 
any longer. 

And there for an hour she stayed motionless, until 
Mrs. Damas returned from her class. 

“ Dawdling, Ray ?” she cried gaily. “ How have you 
got on to-day ?” 

She walked straight across the room to the easel on 
which Rachel’s portrait stood. 

“ Why, Rachel, dearie !” she exclaimed, “ what have 
you been doing?” 

“ I have done nothing,” Rachel said, getting up from 
her seat and going to look at the picture. “ I have 
been idle for hours,” and then she saw that during the 
little while in which she had been blindly painting in 
an attempt to keep her self-possession, she had put in 
lines about the girl’s mouth and eyes utterly out ol 
keeping with the gay white gown and pretty blue 
ribbons and the gray kitten on her shoulder, giving 


206 


E 1RVEST. 


her an expression of hunted misery, which on looking 
in the glass she saw reproduced in her own strained 
white face. And besides this she had, by chance in her 
blind pain, let one of her brushes fall upon the picture and 
there lay a great crimson smear right across the heart. 

For a moment she was almost too sick with pain to 
speak. “ I have effectually done for myself,” she said 
at last, trying hard to speak in her ordinary voice, 
though to her own ears even it sounded harsh and 
discordant — “ There, let me put it away. I hate the 
thing; I shall never touch it again.” 

Mrs. Damas turned and looked at her. “Why, 
Rachel, my dear,” she asked, M what is it ?” 

“ I — I — ” began Rachel. 

“ Has the General been here — or Harrington ? Has 
anything happened to upset you ?” 

“ To upset me ? ” cried Rachel, with a wild laugh. 

“My dear, you are keeping something back from 
me — something which it would ease your mind to tell 
me,” Mrs. Damas persisted. “What is it, Rachel? 
Tell me, my dear.” 

“ I have never kept but one thing from you, 
Dorothy,” said Rachel mournfully, “ and that was the 
name of — of — him. It was Valentine Harrington.” 

“ Dear heaven !” cried Mrs. Damas with blank amaze- 
ment — “ I have been as blind as a bat. Well — he has 
been here to day ! And what has happened?” 

Rachel laughed nervously, and pointed to the 
crimson stain on the bosom of the girl in the picture. 

“ Just that ! ” she said. “ I have done my best to be 
true to myself — and this is my harvest.” 


TEE END. 


























































































































































































































































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